[meteorite-list] OC man believes he's found a meteor

From: Linton Rohr <lintonius_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 12:36:03 -0800
Message-ID: <6CE07632C3514CBAB3194F502CF7855F_at_D190TH71>

"It still had, like, little flames coming out of these holes, and it was,
like, glowing red hot."
Uhhh, right. Say no more.
Seems like this trend is on the increase.
Linton

----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Stanley" <stanleygregr at hotmail.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 12:09 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] OC man believes he's found a meteor


>
> OC man believes he's found a meteor
>
>
> http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20100105/NEWS01/1050355/-1/newsfront2/OC-man-says-he-found-meteor
>
> OCEAN CITY -- Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket? An Ocean
> City man said he did just that.
>
> Quantcast
>
> Derrick Miller was walking along the Boardwalk toward his Seventh Street
> home around 5:20 a.m., as he does every night after finishing his
> overnight taxi shift, when he saw an object falling from the sky at 21st
> Street and the Boardwalk. Miller said he saw the object while glancing
> over his shoulder, keeping a lookout for a fox that lives in the area, one
> he likes to feed hot dogs or doughnuts.
>
> "I saw a shooting star," said Miller, 37. "It landed 15, 20 yards away
> from me in the sand. I walked up to see what it was. It still had, like,
> little flames coming out of these holes, and it was, like, glowing red
> hot. I basically just buried it and marked it so I could come back to get
> it the next day. When I got back, unburied it -- and the sand around it,
> it looked like little shards of glass, real thin glass. It was still warm
> to the touch."
>
> Miller said the rock-like object measures 1 1/2 inches long by 1 inch wide
> and weighs 20 grams. He said it left a foot-wide divot in the sand 6
> inches deep.
>
> He said the only other person out on the Boardwalk at the time was a
> police officer. "I just happened to be in the right spot at the right
> time," Miller said.
>
> A meteor is a piece of debris that falls to Earth from space. Most are
> pebble-sized, according to NASA. They are categorized either as a "find,"
> with no regard to when they arrived, or a "fall" -- which means it's
> confirmed that a person watched the rock plummet to the surface and later
> retrieved it. Given that the earth's surface is about two-thirds water,
> most meteors land in the ocean. Meteors can land on other planetary
> bodies, too, like the moon.
>
> According to Paul Warren, a researcher with the Institute of Geophysics
> and Planetary Physics at the University of California Los Angeles, it's
> unlikely that a fall meteorite would have been burning or glowing at
> ground level.
>
> "You see, the object comes through the atmosphere in a very brief time.
> It's coming at a cosmic velocity, an interplanetary velocity of about 10
> miles a second or so," Warren said. "So the outside skin of the object
> will get very hot as it first encounters the atmosphere, but the interior
> is still very cold -- it's coming from space, where its temperature is
> freezing.
>
> "So, by the time anybody could get to it, that skin, it's probably not
> going to be glowing by the time anybody can go over and look at it. It
> actually cools down as it comes down through the lower atmosphere.
> Everything is slowed greatly coming through the atmosphere unless it's
> very big.
>
> Quantcast
>
> "If it's a big object, it'll make it down with its cosmic velocity, and
> that'll be potentially catastrophic, with a big impact crater. Meteorites,
> they've been slowed down and they land in a comparatively gentle way," he
> said.
>
> According to The Meteoritical Society, a nonprofit group, there have been
> a total of 1,231 falls recorded globally to date. In the U.S., there were
> 149 since 1810, and in Maryland, only two have ever been confirmed: a 16
> 1/2-pound meteorite that fell near the Potomac River in Charles County in
> 1825, and a 24-gram object in St. Mary's County north of Point Lookout
> State Park in 1919.
>
> Miller said he still hasn't decided what to do with his meteorite.
>
> "I got a couple calls. One guy wants to buy it. I don't know, I really
> haven't thought about it yet. It's just sitting in my house," he said.
>
> Warren suggested that Miller bring the object to a geologist to confirm
> its origin. He said his Los Angeles lab has bins full of "meteor wrongs,"
> as he and his colleagues call them, brought by those hopeful to confirm
> their bolide is bona fide.
>
> "When we look at them, unfortunately, most of the time, people are
> disappointed. Sometimes they're just crushed -- they can't believe it when
> we tell them that their grandfather's old rock he says fell from the sky
> is a piece of limestone," he said.
>
> bshane at dmg.gannett.com 410-213-9442, ext.
>
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Received on Tue 05 Jan 2010 03:36:03 PM PST