[meteorite-list] Space Ice

From: Richard Kowalski <damoclid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 13:12:27 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <945864.94635.qm_at_web33902.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hey Mike,

I'm wondering if it is Louis Frank's "Mini-Comets" that you heard being discussed?

An idea first introduced over two decades ago, and discredited, Frank pushed the idea more strongly in the mid to late 90s due to new "evidence" and of course was rejected even more strongly.

His hypothesis says as many as 30,000 twenty - forty ton objects hit the earth each day.

No observational evidence supports the idea.

Read here:

http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=77

A quick back of the envelope calculation shows that 30 tons of liquid water would be 7500 gallons or 28,390 liters. As a liquid that volume can also be represented as 28.39 cubic meters. Of course water ice has a larger volume.

As I mentioned in a post yesterday, 2008 TC3 was about 5 meters in diameter before entry. Assuming a perfect sphere (impossible) that would be about 65.45 cubic meters, or 2.3 times larger by volume. If my maths are correct, the average diameter of these hypothetical "mini-comets would be 3.76-m spheres.

Since one would assume that ice will have a higher albedo than TC3's 5%, blocks of ice will be *much* brighter than TC3 and with 30,000 of them impacting every DAY, we should see these thousands of these things all over the sky, all night long, every night. We often see objects that are much smaller and darker than this passing by the earth, so it is essentially impossible for this hypothesis to be correct.

I won't discuss how hard it would be to maintain blocks of ice this small a size this close to the Sun without out-gassing.

Meteorites are made of rock & metal only.

--
Richard Kowalski
http://fullmoonphotography.net
IMCA #1081
--- On Mon, 9/7/09, Mike Hankey <mike.hankey at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Mike Hankey <mike.hankey at gmail.com>
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Space Ice
> To: "meteoritelist" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Date: Monday, September 7, 2009, 11:15 AM
> Happy Labor Day Everyone,
> 
> I've heard some people talk about how sometimes meteors can
> be big
> balls of ice.
> 
> How common is this? Specifically what are the chances that
> the PA
> fireball I'm looking for could have been an ice ball? That
> would
> really suck.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mike Hankey
> http://www.mikesastrophotos.com
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Received on Mon 07 Sep 2009 04:12:27 PM PDT