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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.

5 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Sending Aid by DWormed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone know if there are any charities accepting aid money yet? It would be nice to help.

    At least after this mess is cleaned up, they will have something to tell the tourists. They can take solace in the fact that they aren't the new meteor crater.

    --
    Dependable, Reliable Furnishings
  2. Re:What's all this then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Actually, NASA does not track everything larger than a tennis ball. The U.S. space command (part of the air force) tracks most things larger than a tennis ball in low Earth orbit . If this came from interplanetary space there is almost no chance to see it. There are search programs going on, but right now they cover only the northern hemisphere, and with a size down to about 100 meters in diameter. The Australian government recently slashed funding for the only southern-hemisphere search.

    So in fact, it is quite possible that a dinosaur-killer could hit New York tomorrow and wipe us all out, and we would have NO warning. Thank your government for their lack of foresight for that.

  3. 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

  4. Re:What's all this then? by vondo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Imagine if this thing had hit a towerblock in London, or an apartment complex in New York, possibly killing or injuring hundreds?

    Hundreds!?!!? Oh my God!!! It's a good thing we don't have fires anymore, that earthquakes are completely predictable so no one ever dies in those. It's also good we can stop hurricanes off our shores, and 15,000 people don't die in heat waves anymore. So, yeah, now is the time to really get to work on solving a problem that hasn't killed a single person in recorded history.

  5. 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.