Slashdot Mirror
Pennsylvania Meteor Report
squiggy writes: "Turns out the scorched corn field in Pennsylvania, and the reports of car sized space rocks hitting the earth were a bit overthe top. Likely, the object was very small, disintegrated before impact, and anything that might have reached the ground intact would have been cold to the touch. The full story is here"
Posted by dxkj:
They didnt mention the several people injured by the broken glass, and one man blinded. The real question is, did someone travel into the future and exact vengeance on their enemy by sending this "rock" to fall in the right place at the right time to blind the future from the enemies of the past...
correct... go check the urban legands website
(I'm too lazy to go find it) Some guys from nasa tested a penny frop in a vacumn chamber.
It's fast, a penny dropped from the ESB would likely only sting. They predict that you could probably catch it in your hand.
No take a look at the speed - I don't actually know what the terminal velocity of of rock is but I'm guessing 150-300 MPH. Sounds impressive 'till you realize that there are cars that can hit the low end of that. It's fast but we're talking terrestrial-fast, not astronomical-fast.
So, now figger what damage a sports car going very very fast would do to the county: Not much. Seriously - a sports car weighs around a thousand pounds or so, what would one do if it hit a particularly hard part of the county - say slamming into a cliff along the highway?
Oh, the neighbors might hear the impact or notice the new ditch next door but we're not talking plowing-up-the-earth walls-of-flame call-out-the-Nat'l-Guard stuff here. It's a thud & likely a good thud but still a thud.
Even doubling the speed of the car doesn't do all that much - you just get a stronger thud that would rattle the dishes & crack some plaster on houses close by but that's about it. Now make it a car that's solid all of the way though - still just a big thud. Folks a few blocks away might hear & feel it but still not going to rattle any seismographs in the next state, probably not even ruin any houses it doesn't actually hit up against.
For comparison btw recall that a similar meteor behaved about the same of northern Canada last year and how many parts from it were found on the surface of a frozen lake. Not punched-though but laying on top of the ice melting through slowly - from solar-heat (like any rock on a frozen lake.) Not glowing hot, not punching through the ice, just sitting there.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Starts out car sized at the top of the atmosphere, ends up baseball-sized or smaller at the bottom if anything at all makes it to the surface (depends on trajectory, composition, and how the thing ablates.)
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Check your own facts, bub. It is quite clearly the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator (spelling of 'Illudium' may vary). If you want to claim something else, find an audio clip.
(I just love the way Marvin the Martian says "modulator".)
--
But then again, I could be wrong.
Apparently, he had a sign that said, "Ten dollars to see it, twenty dollars to watch me jack off."
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Then of course you'd have to go back into space to get it back...
Pope
What? Bear is driving car? How can that be?!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I'd like to see a car that weighs 30 tonnes. "Woohoo, look at that pavement fly!" H. Simpson.
But look at the parent of my comment:
"um... According to the article it was 1 to 2 meters across and 30 metric tons.
That sounds car-sized to me."
I was taking a bit of a liberty with the definition of "car-sized" in that context to make an obscure Simpsons reference.
This post was intended as a reply to "Unsurprising"...
Quote:
"If this was a rocky asteroid, then it probably measured between 1 and 2 meters across and weighed 30 or so metric tons."
That sounds at least "car sized" by any definition I can think of.
If a car-sized meteor*ite* landed, it would definitely been bigger news...
They said it was car-sized, never said it weight as much as a car.
I don't know about a penny, but I have seen what happens when a bolt fall off the top of an oil derrick and hits someone's helmet:
Think 2 inch deep impact mark.
Fortunately, the helmet was steel, and the person I knew who had this happen to him (I was a kid at the time) didn't get killed...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
How about a Ningi dropped on the planet from space?
"Money
Monetary units - none.
In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altairian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flanian Pobble bead is only exchangeable for other Flanian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination."
Just think of the havoc THAT hyperaccelerated piece of small change would cause.
What was the name of that movie? Was it "Creepshow?" It doesn't seem like many people caught it (or they don't think it's funny.)
If it makes you feel any better, I thought your comment was funny.
____________________
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
>was very small, disintegrated before impact, and anything that might have reached the ground intact would have been cold to the touch
...
so what they're saying is that the UFO was small, capable of disintegration at very high speeds (obviously a sign of an advanced life form), and cold, eh? They were probably just searching for some nice hot cambells chick noodle soup
"Old man yells at systemd"
The penny thing seems like an urban legend to me. Doesn't a penny (or any object) reach a terminal velocity based on its weight and aerodynamics? I am thinking that a penny would reach terminal velocity after a few meters. I'm not saying it wouldn't hurt like hell, but I doubt it would penetrate the block of a Lincoln Town Car.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
A Smallville couple, Mr. and Mrs. Kent, were arrested today on child kidnapping charges. The couple alleges they "found" the child in a corn field near their farm. Mr. Kent is undergoing tests at the Smallville Psychiatric Hospital while the authorities attempt to locate the childs parents.
It was most likely swamp gas reflected off the planet Venus.
Or a weather balloon, perhaps.
But I would certainly not tell anyone that I saw a fireball the other night.
--
Unnamed witnesses spoke of seeing author Stephen King dressed as a hayseed and approaching the object one it landed.
Witnesses heard Mr. King exclaim "Meteor shit!" at which point he smabled back to his shotgun shack muttering abuot "washing it off."
Mr. King was later unable to be found for comment. However, his shack did appear to be very well-stocked with houseplants and lush flora.
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
It was a small rocketship carrying a strange young visitor from another planet, with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men!
Even the meteors are getting downsized...
Apparently, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.
This is unsurprising, since a car-sized metor would have basically blown up a good size chunk of whatever county it landed in ... if you read the original story it was saying baseball sized or thereabouts
Where did it say the object was baseball sized?
The original story said it was 1-2 meters across. Also, the article said thae object could have been 30 tons! By comparison my car weighs about 2,500 lbs, or about 1.2 tons. So this object could have weighed about 15 cars! That would be a pretty heavy/large baseball... certainly not regulation.
From the link at the top of the slashdot article (which might have changed), it says: "At the heart of Monday's fireball, however, was a solitary object -- perhaps a small asteroid or a piece of a comet" ... "If this was a rocky asteroid, then it probably measured between 1 and 2 meters across and weighed 30 or so metric tons"
According to the report, Mark Wahlberg emerged from the 'object.'
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I've got to believe that if there was a big chunk of space crud that was going to hit Mother Earth that The Powers That Be wouldn't tell us about it until it hit us.
It'd be pretty easy to argue that if we didn't see it coming then it wouldn't be nearly as bad as if we had a week of hysteria and apocalyptic reactions to the event
Of course you don't want anyone hurt or any serious damage done, but these things are great for science. They contain a lot of information about the early solar system that got chewed up on Earth a long time ago. Life on Mars nonwithstanding there are a lot of worthwhile questions which can be answered by meteors, such as what conditions were like when the planets were forming. (That's also one of the things moon rocks are good for...)
Plus, on a social note, now we don't get another round of asteroid movies. So much for seeing Jim Carrey climbing around on a metor and screaming as he gets stuck and rides it into Cleveland...
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I think it might have gotten more media attention...
You're nothing; like me.
It seems as if the website Astronomy Picture of the Day at NASA might have a picture of it tommorow as they show tommorow's imaging being "Northeast Fireball"
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Eyewhitnesses accounts are often the least reliable method of determining the truth of events. Ask any cop...
+++++++++++++++++++++
The Digital Sorceress
Referring to the Dr. Suess book, "Horton Hears a Who", we can confirm that reading page 12 backwards reveals the ETA of Armageddon (end of life as we know it), and you are all wrong in your estimates. See for yourself, it's in the book.
you REALLY should check your facts... it was the "Erodium P.U.36 Explosive Space Disintegrator" that was employed by the nefarious Marvin the Martian...
if not the fireball what scorched the cornfield?
um... According to the article it was 1 to 2 meters across and 30 metric tons.
That sounds car-sized to me.
...
Turns out the scorched corn field in Pennsylvania, and the reports of car sized space rocks hitting the earth were a bit overthe top.
;)
Are you implying that the US media wasn't completely factual regarding this incident?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Why is it that everything falling from the sky is compared in size to a car? I mean, in the movie Armageddon, they were "Baskeballs and Volkswagons", the chunks of MIR were "as large as a car" and now, people were saying that a falling object was "car-sized".
This reminds me of how they say that voracious fish can skeletonize a cow in less than X minutes. Are these some kind of bizarre empirial system measurement? What's the metric equivalent?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Do you know what alien life form leaves a green spectral trail?
---------
Launch all sig
Flaming balls that go down in corn fields.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
even the 6 that popped up while I was typing that.
My joke got modded as Insightful and my insight got modded as Funny.
If the METEOR--a meteor is a fiery streak in the sky, not a physical object--were caused by an object measuring 1 to 2 meters (or even 2,000 meters) across, the object would not have been an asteriod. By definition, an ASTEROID is a celestial body with a diameter ranging from a few to several hundred kilometers. "A few" kilometers is at least three, and three kilometers is 3,000 meters. If the celestial body is smaller than an asteriod--say, 2 or 200 or 2,000 meters across--it is a METEOROID. If the object makes it through the atmosphere and hits the earth, it becomes a METEORITE. A meteorite can begin as the rocky core of a comet, as an asteroid, or as a meteoroid. If it is a meteoroid, it might also be a chunk of Kryptonite from an exploded planet in another solar system.
I live in the (hick) town where it landed. It's called Salladasburg. Has about the same area has williamsport and 1/100th the population :P No meteor landed as far as i can tell :(
that's what theywant you to think
Nosce te Ipsum
It's coming. We have about three weeks left.
Do I detect a lisp?
My father sagely pointed out that the only reason to worry would have been if the -whatever- landed in Selinsgrove. Portent of doom, anyone?
MCH/VO S* W- N+++++ PEC+++ D(s++/r) A a+>+++ C* G++(++++) Q+ 666 Y
No, the answer is not Cowboy Neal!
If we're really lucky, one of these suckers will land right on her car... making doubly sure she won't be able to drive.
Ratguy
More to the point, it begs the question - car sized when it hit the atmosphere? WHich it likely was - and as the article says probably nothing much hit the earth. The difference between something the size of a car hitting the atmosphere and something the size of a car by the time it reaches the earth is HUGE.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Actually, for that matter if you read the original story it was saying baseball sized or thereabouts. If anything was the size of a car, maybe the fireball was, but that says next to nothing about the size of the actual meteor.
Believe me, when a car-sized meteor hits a populated area you won't need to go to Slashdot to hear the story.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
If they no longer contain demons then they are exor-sized.
If they are Jewish then they are circum-sized.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
Damn Godless ateroids!
Kill them all, I say.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
You don't seem to understand.
I DO NOT OWN A LINCOLN TOWN CAR.
Better to stay inside, away from the city.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
If a penny dropped from a very tall building is capable of killing someone, I worry about thousands of peices of rocks falling from the sky. I'm not comfortable thinking about the possiblility that my life could be suddenly and unexpectedly ended by an event so stupid. It's better to stay inside and post on Slashdot.
My #2 irrational fear?
Getting hit with a super-accelerated penny.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
If they were car-sized in the U.S. they would be Europe-sized.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
So Marvin the Martian could not destroy the earth with the eludion-235 detonator anyway.
Best he could do is some Pennsylvania cornfield.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
Preliminary reports from the cornfield seem to indicate little or no evidence of an actual impact; which would seem to indicate that whatever it was burned up before it reached the ground (as they usually do).
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
if they had fallen in Europe they'd be car-sized.
It was painful to see them quote someone from FAA as saying it might be a "meteor shower." They'll quote anybody who answers the phone in the first 10 minutes after the news breaks. I'm glad Donald Yeomans set it straight. I remember using his diagrams to plan my observations of Comet Halley.
Personally, I like the asteroid scare much more than the "red" scare.. We can't have a hotline to an asteroid, no emergency meeting.. An asteroid has no remorse and it makes for decent disaster movies.. If it wasn't for the possibility of our obliteration why would we ever go to the movies.. and once the movie industry fails...we as a culture are doomed..
ohh..I like that..
I think that should be the next big scare..
"Nothing to be scared of!"
--
When I was a kid the house up the street from me got hit with a meteorite. Went right through the roof, through the second floor, bounced around all crazy-like in the downstairs before finally coming to a stop.
Scared the hell out of me. I was certain my house was next. Though I remember thinking it would be pretty cool to have my own meteorite.
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Space has a terrible secret!
But did any of you listen? Now please, go stand by the stairs, the space robots are coming to protect us.
Crap. So close to Williamsport, yet so far away. And here I was hoping it was punishment from [insert desired religious icon here] sent to my ex fiance (who attends Lycoming College) for what she did to me. Oh well, a man can dream, can't he?
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man