[meteorite-list] Fake Norway Rock

From: Steinar Midtskogen <steinar_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 21:44:33 +0200
Message-ID: <8738hjk5we.fsf_at_latinitas.org>

http://www.universetoday.com/111076/follow-up-on-skydiving-meteorite-crowdsourcing-concludes-it-was-just-a-rock/

As one of the people who tried to analyse the video before it was made
public, let me add a few points:

We were stuck, only left with a solution that seemed consistent with
the videos, but extremely unlikely. So we went public with the videos
and with the only solution that we had, asking for help. And that we
got.

We considered several scenarious, but could not get them to match the
videos, including the debris in the chute scenario. I'd say it was
the prime suspect (cf the TV interview), but I'll openly admit that I
was totally unable to see how it could match the video unless
teleportation was involved. Even with Occam in mind, a meteorite
beats teleportation.

The main problems with the debris scenario was that the rock appeared
several seconds after the chute had been deployed, it was passing fast
(also taking into account that it could be close to the lens), it
didn't seem to accelerate as expected if it fell out of the chute, and
it seemed to fall from above the chute. Our mistake was that we
didn't see that debris could fall much slower than the skydiver at
first and then overtake him near terminal velocity later.

So when an explanation for how this is possible was given (by several
people independently), along with Phil Metzger's analysis of the
speed/size/distance relations, it took us very little time to accept
the new solution. It was clearly the missing possibility that trumps
the meteorite.

So let's move on. It's safe to say there's no meteorite.

-- 
Steinar

Received on Fri 11 Apr 2014 03:44:33 PM PDT