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Meteorite Strikes Indian Village

Posted by michael on from the failed-their-saving-throw dept.

PS writes "The BBC is reporting that a village in eastern India was struck by a meteorite Saturday evening, wrecking several houses and injuring about twenty people. Fortunately, no one appears to have been killed by the impact or subsequent fires. CNN suggests that a second village near the impact site may have also been struck by part of the meteorite." Human/meteorite encounters are not entirely unheard of.

2 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Chicago Field Museum has some good meteor examples by stompro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was at the Field Museum this past week and got a real kick out of the meteor exhibits. They had several large metalic meteors that were out in the open free to touch. Putting my hand on it and thinking about it flying though space, to be rudely blocked by the planet earth. It wasn't it's fault that there was some stupid planet in the way... Anyway, they also had several examples of meteorites hitting houses. In once case it went through the guys garage, through his car and bounced off the cars muffler, ending up sitting on the car seat. Another one took out a guys gutter. The pictures are pretty funny, all the guys looked pretty pissed off, but it was in the 20s or 30s, maybe people didn't smile back then.
    Field Museum Meteor collection

  2. Something seems wrong with this report by ctwxman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am not an expert on this subject, though I played one on TV (really... but that's a long story). I know enough about meteorites to be a little dangerous.

    Though the CNN article credits Press Trust of India, a search on PTI's site found nothing (for me at least).

    When the articles talked about burning fragments, it didn't ring true. So, I went to Google to do a little quick research.

    Except for those really huge impacts, smaller meteorites are relatively slow movers in the lower reaches of the atmosphere and lose their heat rather quickly. Let me steal some work from:

    Date: Mon Nov 30 23:28:41 1998
    Posted By: Robert Macke, Grad student, Physics, Washington University
    Area of science: Astronomy

    If you have a baseball-sized meteorite of density 3.2 g/cc, using a value of 1.2 kg/m^3 for the density of air, you will find that the meteorite will slow from its approach velocity of roughly 11000 meters per second to its terminal velocity of 60 m/s in a mere 28 seconds, having traveled only 3 km. (By comparison, the speed of sound is roughly 315 m/s.) It then spends another 100 mins or so falling before it hits the ground, giving it ample time to cool down below its original temperature it gained during entry into the atmosphere. (At 60 m/s, it's moving like a fastball, but not much more. It'll still cause a lot of damage if your car or house is in the way, but it wouldn't start a fire or create any appreciable crater. It would probably be a bit warm to the touch.

    Any learned assistance would be appreciated. I'm not adverse to being shown to be wrong in a subject that I have little more than passing knowledge.