[meteorite-list] Chelyabinsk at White House today

From: Chris Peterson <clp_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2013 22:41:26 -0600
Message-ID: <515126F6.8090509_at_alumni.caltech.edu>

While I have great respect for Boslough's modeling of large impactors,
I'm not convinced his models are really optimized for such small bodies
as this one. More to the point, his models typically start with
hypothetical values for the material properties of the bodies, and then
calculate their atmospheric dynamics. I don't think the material
properties of this body have been well enough established at this point
to make much more than an educated guess about the sort of behavior we
would have seen were the path somewhat different.

In fact, a steeper angle might also have resulted in a higher
detonation. The actual shock wave appears to have dissipated very
quickly, as we'd expect from such a small total energy.

Understand, I'm not saying Boslough is wrong, only that I remain
skeptical of any strong conclusions until a good deal more analysis
takes place, and a good deal more is known about the body that exploded
over Chelyabinsk.

Chris

*******************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On 3/25/2013 8:31 PM, Kelly Beatty wrote:
> Chris...
>
>> It's extremely doubtful that this body could have done all that much
>> more damage. It simply wasn't big enough, or strong enough.
>
> I spoke at some length about this with Mark Boslough, a Sandia Labs expect in
> airborne shock waves (read: bombs). he's the one who modeled Tunguska a few
> years ago:
> http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/newsblog/12662606.html
>
> what Mike Farmer says agrees with Boslough's assessment: had the impactor come
> in more vertically, its terminal burst would have been lower, and its shock
> wave (and fireball) would have been focused on the ground directly below,
> creating substantially more damage. details:
> http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/Update-on-the-Russian-Mega-Meteor-195553631
> .html
>
>
> clear skies,
> Kelly
Received on Tue 26 Mar 2013 12:41:26 AM PDT