Meteorite Hits Girl

redcliffe writes "The BBC has a story about a 14 year old North Yorkshire girl who was hit, on the foot, by a meteorite. Where's Bruce Willis when you need him?" The young Miss Carlton notes: "This does not happen that often in Northallerton"; no doubt the City of York is where most meteorites land.

Comments

Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key.

[Mr. Flibble]

From the article: .Noticing it was "quite hot", she showed it to her father Niel.

The problem with this is that meteors are not hot. See this link and this one. From the first link:

Objects from space that enter Earth's atmosphere are -- like space itself -- very cold and they remain so even as they blaze a hot-looking trail toward the ground. "The outer layers are warmed by atmospheric friction, and little bits flake away as they descend," explains Yeomans. This is called ablation and it's a wonderful way to remove heat. (Some commercial heat shields use ablation to keep spacecraft cool when they re-enter Earth's atmosphere.) "Rocky asteroids are poor conductors of heat," Yeomans continued. "Their central regions remain cool even as the hot outer layers are ablated away."

And from the second:

Are asteroids hot or cold as they descend through Earth's atmosphere? (Level II, They are cold as they enter and remain so even as they blaze a hot-looking trail toward the ground. The outer layers are warmed by friction and little bits flake away as they descend.)

So I suppose it is part of abilated material if it is real, that would explain why it was hot. That would probably still make it a meteor. It might also explain why she still owns her foot.

Re:Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key.

[kindbud]

How many times must you cut and paste the word before you realize that "ablation" is not spelled with the letter "i"?

A-B-L-A-T-I-O-N
A-B-L-A-T-E-D :)

Re:Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key.

[Physics Dude]

Ever hear the phrase "Don't believe everything you read"?

The sources you quote are a lot of rehashed BS. Note how the wording is nearly identical in each. Obviously copied by someone who doesn't have a clue about physics... (probably just a Ph.D. ;)

"... very cold and they remain so even as they blaze a hot-looking trail ..."

hot-looking??? Just what do they think is causing all that bright white light to be given off anyway? It's called BLACK BODY RADIATION! It means that the surface of the object emitting the light is thousands of degrees. The specific temperature can be determined directly from the light's most intensely emitted frequency.

Most meteorites litterally burn up in the atmosphere on re-entry, leaving at mosts tiny specs that fall as dust. These are solid rock and iron and their surfaces don't just flake off like a piece of pie crust.

Now, the core temperature of the object and it's temperature on impact is another matter, but those quotes are WAY off base.

Terminal velocity

[ciurana]

d00D,

Terminal velocity for an average human body is only about 110 mi/h, or about 175 km/h, give or take a few ds/dt. Maybe top off at 200 mi/h if you really try.

A meteorite might go a bit faster, provided it is somewhat round. It will also be rather hot due to friction.

I thought I'd share this with you.

Cheers!

E

Re:Not the first time . . .

[NeMon'ess]

From an issue of Maxim:

Someone wrote in asking if a penny dropped from the empire state building could kill someone on the ground. A physicist contacted by Maxim suggested fastening g a length of string to the penny and holding it out the window of a moving car. When the penny is at 45 degrees, check the spedometer and that is a very rough estimate of the object's terminal velocity. Maxim's penny only had a rough terminal velocity of 16mph. The metorite could be similar. We still don't know its speed entering the atmosphere and how long it took to fall through.

Re:hmm

[Shimbo]

They are mostly iron, so they conduct heat well, and cool off fast in the upper atmosphere...

And she said it looked "rusty". Meteorites are black; they can't oxidize in space.

Presumably that it where the speculation that it may be Martian in origin originates. One might expect Mars crust to be both stony and oxidised. Martian meteorites are pretty rare though, so it makes the story more unlikely. It's barely possible though.

"Gentlemen, I would rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie than believe that stones fall from heaven." -- Thomas Jefferson

Re:And she didn't move???

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Why would you think it would be radioactive? The vast majority of meteorites aren't.

And it's not surprising that her leg wasn't reduced to "smoldering remains." No doubt the meteorite did get quite hot on the upper atmosphere, but by the time it got nearer ground level (and went through England's usual cloud cover ;) it had shed quite a bit of both thermal and kinetic energy. And finally -- I've found meteorites that looked very much like the one in the picture, and one of the surprising things about them is how light they are. They're not solid chunks of rock; their outer surfaces are a kind of frozen rock foam, presumably because of what happens to them on their way through the atmosphere. So I have no problem believing that one of these could hit someone on the foot without doing serious damage.