[meteorite-list] Lifting Bodies and Meteors

From: Jonathan Abel <abelcompany_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2012 17:39:29 -0700
Message-ID: <DC1D5D2CABD443068932D0590599E441_at_userdbdeb94d02>

Here's a general question I've wondered about for some time...

As kids we all played with Bernoulli's Theorem, right? Stick your arm
out the car window and feel the lift as the wind "Venturi's" you up and
down.

A utilitarian curve is built into so many things in our natural world to
take advantage of pure friction...the fluid dynamics of fish
fins...mammals and reptiles...and particularly bird flight...all use the
Venturi Effect to create three dimensional movement in their environment
-- reference this Eagle Owl's incredible final landing approach filmed
at 1,000 frames per second:

Http://www.dogwork.com/owfo8/

Here's my question(s)...aren't the same principles of pressures and
atmospheric compressibility that rule the owl also abounding in the
last, brilliant seconds of a meteor's flight?

If we flew along side it's entry with adequate instruments, what would
we discover?

A meteor burns off it's rugged, broken, irregular shape - creating
orientation - but how does that orientation interact with the friction
and squeezing the atmosphere takes as a result of it's kinetic energy?
Does it spin like a bullet, making it's trajectory more stable? Is there
any desire on the meteor to stay elevated due to the ablating and
melt-back to a thinner rear profile (create a lifting body with the
lowering of atmospheric pressure) and loft the meteor a bit further than
it might have gone without Messrs. Venturi and Bernoulli?

Is there any actual flight lift generated from the sheer "fire" of space
rock coming in at a high speed angle? We see the "boating" of meteoric
material across the sky...is it skimming the heavier atmosphere and
keeping to the thinner stuff till it blows off some speed?

Does the thinner atmosphere on the top of an oriented meteor travel over
the surface with a fraction less friction than the bottom of the meteor
- thus creating lower atmospheric pressure on the top and lifting it
proportionally though it may be spinning?

Cheers!

Jonathan
Received on Tue 03 Apr 2012 08:39:29 PM PDT