[meteorite-list] Russian meteorite event

From: Michael Farmer <mike_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:11:55 -0700
Message-ID: <E84DE036-EB56-44FB-88AA-EB66E3220303_at_meteoriteguy.com>

JPL estimates

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 15, 2013, at 12:53 PM, Bruce Wegmann <brucewegmann at gmail.com> wrote:

> A remarkable co-incidence that this fell within a couple days of the
> anniversary of the Sikhote-Alin fall (with which it will doubtless be
> compared), and during the nearest-ever approach of a significant-sized
> asteroid. In the videos I have seen, the terminal flare of this looks
> comparable to that of a nuclear detonation; in one the fireball passes
> nearly directly overhead, and the ambient light intensity is
> blinding...the fears the ancients had of such events is starting to
> look more reasonable. The news coming out of this area in next few
> days should be intensely interesting. There is one video of the smoke
> trail, showing the unusual parallel trails; about 30 seconds in, he
> catches the shock wave. It's probably the best record of the actual
> acoustic phenomina we'll get...the initial thunder-like blast,
> followed by a long series of crackling and popping; Nininger mentions
> such descriptions in Find a Falling Star...now we can hear it for
> ourselves...remarkable!
> I keep hearing the estimated weight of this at 10 tons or
> so...that's laughable! If this was about the size of a bus, and
> composed of ordinary chondritic rock, the mass would be something on
> the order of 270 tons, achondrite, 220 tons, nickel-iron, 800 tons.
> There's probably more than a couple hundred tons of pulverized
> material in just the smoke trail; compare it to the drawing of the
> Sikhote-Alin fall...the resemblance is more than a passing one. In
> particular, there is virtually no fragmentation during the
> incandescent portion of the flight, in stark contrast to, say, the
> fall of the Peekskill bolide. The S-A iron broke up just few miles
> above the Earth's surface; I'm guessing something similar may have
> happened here, and the amount of recoverable material of comparable
> mass.
> I'm hoping for another planetary, too, but my money is that we're
> looking at another iron fall. My guess is that we'll know for sure in
> the next 48 hours, maybe less.
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Received on Fri 15 Feb 2013 03:11:55 PM PST