[meteorite-list] Hot vs Cold again...wasmMeteorite Crashes Through Thailand House Roof

From: Chris Peterson <clp_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 07:48:59 -0600
Message-ID: <5773D1CB.8050203_at_alumni.caltech.edu>

The fusion crust will likely be warmer than the interior when the
meteorite hits. Not because of residual heat from melting, but because
for the last few tens of seconds of the fall the meteorite was being
blasted with near-ambient temperature air. It was starting to warm up to
ambient- it simply didn't have enough time for that process to proceed
beyond the outer few millimeters.

Chris

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

On 6/29/2016 1:29 AM, Graham Ensor via Meteorite-list wrote:
> Elton...I agree with most of that....but the cooling starts straight after
> hot flight miles up where the air temperature is around -30 -50
> deg...surely any heat in the fusion crust would dissipate very quickly up
> there and then the interior temperature would then equalize to bring it
> down to well below freezing as it free-falls with minimum friction to
> change that....so my thinking is that even the fusion crust would also be
> very cold on landing unless somehow the friction from punching the hole
> heats the surface briefly...but I doubt that it would last more than a
> fraction of a second.
>
> Graham
Received on Wed 29 Jun 2016 09:48:59 AM PDT