[meteorite-list] PBS/NOVA Chelyabinsk documentary for viewing :)

From: Robin Whittle <rw_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2013 02:01:52 +1100
Message-ID: <516038E0.80500_at_firstpr.com.au>

Hi Shawn,

Thanks very much for the videos. Here are my thoughts. I wish I could
be more enthusiastic about them. I stopped watching TV regularly in the
early 70s. With the exception of a handful of programs, not least "The
Addams Family", I find it distractingly drawn out, full of extraneous
stuff, and dumbed down.

  - Robin


I couldn't bear to watch the PBS-Nova documentary. I am sure there are
interesting things in it, but the rapid editing, numerous extraneous
sounds, images and video pieces drove me bananas just dipping into it.

The documentary makers, by their own actions, are stating that their own
edits, their own synthetic sounds and images, their own fast-action
chopping and changing, and repeating of videos of people in distress and
danger from the blast, is more interesting, more entertaining or
whatever than patiently and coherently following Nature and the efforts
of scientists to understand Nature. In other words, they think their
crap is better than what Nature and scientists have to offer.

What a bunch of idiots to make something unwatchable, to me at least,
from what is no-doubt a large body of interesting information.


The BBC doco "The Truth about Meteor" has orchestral, synthesizer and
explosive sounds to accompany the fireball. But the focus of the
program was stated as trying to find out about danger and whether such
things can be prevented in the future. All very well, but the science
is much more interesting to me. There turned out to be a lot of
material on meteorites and asteroids and the scientists who study them.
 But is the Yarkovsky effect:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarkovsky_effect

really responsible for asteroids changing their orbits from those in the
asteroid belt to being on a collision path with Earth? The program
reports that this is the case, by the effect causing the asteroid's
orbit coming close to Jupiter, which perturbs it further.

But it strikes me that a more likely cause, assuming for simplicity that
all asteroids started off in the asteroid belt (which is surely not the
case) is the collisions and near collisions involving gravitational
coupling. With so many asteroids, a few of them will be sent off their
original orbits from time to time, with some of them (I guess, perhaps
with interactions with Jupiter) being perturbed enough to cross Earth's
orbit.

Later they state that collisions could be part of the process.

There was no recognition of the work of Stefan Geens:

http://ogleearth.com/2013/02/reconstructing-the-chelyabinsk-meteors-path-with-google-earth-youtube-and-high-school-math/

The work of determining the trajectory was attributed to "scientists" -
implicitly professionals.

There's slow-motion film of a snowswept conifer forest being impacted by
a shockwave - while they are discussing the Tunguska event. No need to
mention the source of the film (a weapons test, surely) in TV-land -
viewers are assumed to be too dull or uninterested in what they are
actually viewing, provided sounds and images keep moving.

They repeat video several times, rather than show some of the more
interesting videos from Russia, as listed in messages to this list.


The narrator (Prof Iain Stewart) flew to Arizona and as the helicopter
goes over the edge of Barringer Crater, there's a whoosh and an
explosion sound.

There's an interesting section on NASA's vertical gun facility - a 1/4"
aluminium sphere at 5km/sec. This is extrapolated to large meteorite
impacts.

There is a dive in one of the Cenote caves in the Yucatan peninsula.
These caves are on a semicircular arc around the Chicxulub impact zone.
 There's an animation of the aftermath of the impact - which they state
is the cause of the demise of the dinosaurs. The caves apparently
formed much later.

There's a visit to an asteroid tracking telescope in Hawaii. Then a
trip to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Planet_Center at Harvard.
"Its director is Tim Spahr - and his job is to keep track of every
asteroid in the solar system." "There are over 9000 near-Earth
asteroids." Many hundreds are over 1km in diameter. "There are no
catastrophic objects on the horizon (next 100 years)."

Then there's an account of a 2008 discovery in which it appeared an
asteroid was due to impact in 19 hours. It turned out to be a 4 metre
asteroid - which burned up over Sudan:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_TC3


There are repeated simulated videos of asteroids as if their separation
is only about 20 times their diameter. It is totally unrealistic and
uninformative - but they never mention that the density they show is so
unrealistic. Its alarming eye candy.

Then there's a discussion of nudging dangerous asteroids onto a new safe
trajectory.

I didn't find out anything new about the Chelyabinsk event, but I found
it watchable and interesting to see the interviews with scientists.



The third doco "Meteor Strike: Fireball from Space" is from UK Channel
4. It concentrates on the Chelyabinsk event. This has the orchestral
sounds and explosions added - as well as dubbed in screams - artificial
crap at some edit points . . . its mass-market TV.

There was mention of Russia's dangerous roads, but not the crime and
corruption and resulting "accidents" which (I read somewhere) is the
primary reason people run video cameras from their vehicles.

Unfortunately they are too impatient to let a video of the entry run for
more than a few seconds. There were interviews with witnesses.

There were many videos of the blast which I had not seen. I think it is
amazing no-one was killed. There is some video of injured people, but I
thought this was realistic and not sensational. However, they described
"blast after blast", which I think is not a realistic description of
what happened.

There's plenty of synthetic video of meteor impacts and hundreds of
asteroids floating through space cheek-by-jowl, repeated over and over,
instead of using interesting videos from Chelyabinsk.

They are on the scene, apparently two days after the fall, with plucky
UK astrophysicist Elizabeth Pearson. There's a stunning Orthodox church
out in the snow in the middle or nowhere.

"Soaring insurance claims have lead to a boom in dashboard cameras."
There was no mention of corruption and crime. Around 15 minutes in
there's a bunch of traffic accidents, so if you don't want to see people
being injured or killed, skip to 16:00.

Again, the producer's can't bring themselves to hold off the edit button
so the viewers can actually see a full 16 second entry video.

TV takes too long to show anything of interest. I dipped in to parts of
the rest.

26:00 - cracks are evidence of a collision in space?

The rest of the program seemed to be concerned with damage and detecting
other potential impactors before they hit.
Received on Sat 06 Apr 2013 11:01:52 AM PDT