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Record Meteorite Hits Norway
equex256 writes "Early Wednesday morning, a meteorite streaked across the sky in northern Norway, near Finland and Russia. A witness (Article in Norwegian) went up the mountain to where it hit and reported seeing large boulders that had fallen out of the mountainside, along with many broken trees. Norwegian astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard told Aftenposten, Norway's largest newspaper, that he would compare the explosive force of the impact with the Hiroshima bomb. This meteorite is suspected to be much larger than the 90-kilo (198-pound) meteorite which hit Alta in 1904, previously recognized as the largest to hit Norway. From the article: 'Røed Ødegaard said the meteorite was visible to an area of several hundred kilometers despite the brightness of the midnight sunlit summer sky. The meteorite hit a mountainside in Reisadalen in North Troms.'"
(See Niven and Pournelle for consequences of a larger one.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Do meteørites sound different with a slash through the middle?
Yeah its probably fake, but cool nonetheless:3 733199771&q=meteor
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=465344881
And for all you language nazis out there, meteorite is a silly word and should be abolished.
I guess but if I recall correctly hiroshima did a little bit more then just "blow in some curtains". Even if accurate this is a pretty bad metaphor, the Hiroshima bomb brings on ideas of destruction and chaos. Even if you took the radiation aspect away from the Hiroshima bomb it still would have done far more damage. Guess the whole line of "location, location, location" really is true.
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
Was it as big as the one that (supposedly) fell at Tunguska? Although I'm still pretty sure that was caused by dark matter or a UFO or something.
Steve Jobs's giant wallscreen sparkles to life. A visibly pale and shaken Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg appears with a panicked situation room full of Norwegian officials behind him.
"Ah, Prime Minister, good," Jobs says with a trademarked smile. "I see you got our little message. Let's finish our chat about DRM regulations...."
(reference)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Nø really! She was carving her initials intø the side øf a røck with a sharpened interspace tøøthbrush given tø her by Svenge -her brøther in law- an an øslø dentist and star øf many Nørweigan møvies: "The Høt Hands øf an øslø Dentist", "Fillings øf Passiøn", "The Huge Mølars øf Hørst Nørdfink"...
.....
Mynd you, Meteørite hits kan be pretti nasti
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Here is the website of the newspaper and pictures of the meteorite in the sky and the impact: http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article134 6820.ece
I for one, welcome our new chondrite overlords!
.. what we're really concerned about: Høw many møøses gøt killed?
I'm Rocco. I'm the +5 Funny man.
http://cache.aftenposten.no/multimedia/archive/004 11/_L04nedslaget1006_j_411040h.jpg
h ysics/Damage13-hiroshima-c.jpg
=
http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/PHY106/GIF/Still/P
Did they forget a metric conversion or somthing?
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Whenever the topic of meteors comes up, someone has to post a link to the University of Arizona impact effects calculator. Play with the numbers, see if you can destroy the earth.
Also worth checking out along the Lucifer's hammer line of thought is How to Destroy the Earth
I tried a quick reverse engineering of the meteor with the calculator. An iron meteor 4.5 meters in diameter moving 20 km/s hitting crystalline rock at 45 degrees will have a yield of 18 kilotons...slightly higher than the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima. The average interval of an impact of this size on earth is about once every 5 years. Most go largely unnoticed. The earth is a big place.
Yes, it's real. The impact also showed up on seismic recorders http://www.astro.uio.no/ita/nyheter/ildkule06/ildk ule06.html (You can study the images in this Norwegian article from the University of Oslo).
I wonder (1) how recent and what resolution Google Earth's latest imagery is, and (2) can we get them to take another shot ASAP and compare them?
There is a difference in how the energy was distributed. With the A-Bomb, it was an atmospheric blast. With the space rock, the energy was absorbed into the Earths crust.
Life is not for the lazy.
Actually, I saw a paper presented back in the late 90's that fairly convincingly made the case for a mostly iron meteor. The author's contention was that the object slowed due to air resistance, it would heat up. As is heated, the metal would have softenned. As it softenned, the metal would start to pancake like a dum-dum bullet. As it pancakes, its air resistance increases, causing it to slow down even more and heat up even faster, causing it to pancake even more... until you get an airbirst at an altitude with on the order of magnitude suggested by the tree angles at Tunguska. If you acept his hypothesis about the meteor's composition, there were no major contradictions in the evidence.
Though we've seen this information posted multiple places on the www, considering the nature of this beast how can anyone know if it's factual or not?
It's on slashdot -- it MUST be real!
> The tabloids probably wouldn't pay enough
maybe the tabloids wouldn't, but meteroites are worth more per pound than gold.
if you could recover a couple pounds of those 98 pounds you'll be buying any car you wanted.
Im just happy that it didnt hit anywhere else. Like New York, or any other big city.
I almost (alomst!) wish it landed near enough one to cause some decent damage. Then maybe people would take the threat of a planet killer serious enough to get a properly funded space program going so a some of us could get off planet (like me). AD ASTRA!
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Yeah, but how many Libraries of Congress is that?
Well, Hiroshima was 15 kilotons or 6.3x10^13 J and one burning Library of Congress is 7.3×10^14 J, so ~8.5% of one LoC per meteor strike.
Yeah, I'm going to go pretend I didn't just spend part of my Friday night researching that calculation now...
Only if the Hiroshima bomb was a dud. Seriously, a bomb unleashing 63 terajoules of energy (from wikipedia). Even if that rock was 300kg, that means that it would have to be travelling at 648,000m/s or about 1,500,000 mph, in order to have the same amount of energy. Heck, that's about .0022c!
To say this guy overstated the impact is an understatement in itself.
We had one of these a few weeks ago in south east New Mexico. The explosion shook the house. People that did see it said it was the 'size of a dinner plate' before it exploded. Unfortunately nobody had a camera handy. Didn't get much media coverage at all.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
..ønce bit mi sister...
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
What sounds so strange about it?
If you mean linguistically, I guess I can see what you mean - I think they're trying to use "midnight sun" as a single noun, making "midnight sunlit" an adjective.
But yes, the sky really is sunlit 24/7 up there right now.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Followed through to the link mentioned earlier: http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article134 6820.ece
1 57.html
From that article, this one line jumped out at me: "Enorm fart."
Now granted, I don't speak the native tongue up there in Norway, but I think we all can translate that.
Also found this sesmic data on the web: http://www.norsar.no/NDC/bulletins/gbf/2006/GBF06
NORTH OF SVALBARD
Origin time Lat Lon Azres Timres Wres Nphase Ntot Nsta Netmag
2006-157:02.13.21.0 83.81 2.84 5.25 0.18 1.49 2 2 1 0.04
Sta Dist Az Ph Time Tres Azim Ares Vel Snr Amp Freq Fkq Pol Arid Mag
SPI 668.3 346.0 Pn 02.14.50.4 0.2 349.0 3.0 10.1 5.2 50.5 4.93 1 345124
SPI 668.3 346.0 Sn 02.15.55.8 0.2 338.5 -7.5 5.8 4.1 34.0 8.43 3 2 345125 0.04
The problem is not the people doing the tracking, but the funding they don't get.
There are some effots being made such as http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/> but they get next to no funding.
How many people are you going to be able to convince when all you can say is that "It's likely one will hit a populated area sometime in the future".The general reaction that I've witnessed is "If it was going to happen, why hasn't it yet?" and "That's just science fiction".
It's far to abstract a threat for the vast majority of people to care about. . .
Building a better backup.
Zettabyte Storage
What, Superman is released soon...next there will be reports of flying men with capes originating from the meteor's site?
When I seven I was in our very large backyard swinging on our swingset with my friends one summer when we saw this streak of light high in the sky. It was only visible for a few seconds, but as we watched the streak grew brighter until it streaked over the roof of our house. About twenty or thirty feet above the ground it seemed to disintigrate with a popping sound. We searched the backyard for debris but didn't find anything. The meteorite was so small that I am not surprised, but it sure was bright for something so small. That was very cool. Even our neighbor on the hill above us came running down and said he saw the meteorite and wondered if it hit our house.
Years later as a teenager I was sleeping out on our deck to avoid the summer heat inside the house and I was woken by this shrieking sound, like fireworks, except much louder. I jumped up and saw a very bright, long streak of light screaching across the sky over the lake our house overlooked. As the meteor approached the ground the screaching got louder and higher in pitch until it seemed to "pop" into nothingness. Besides the incredibly high pitched shriek, I was awed by how bright the meteor was as it lit up our deck like a very bright lantern.
Obviously, both these meteorites do not compare in size to the one that hit Norway, but it was still an awe inspiring sight.
Most insurance policies don't cover "acts of God" or even "natural disasters" of this type.
:)
Why do people still think we live in the 19th century?
Insurance policies today typically cover most Acts of God. Hail, lightning, windstorm, water damage, you name it. What they don't cover is "catastrophes so big we'd need a few billion to even start paying claims".
Hell, you can actually buy earthquake, tornado, and hurricane insurance, if you're willing to pay for it. However, your $400/year policy doesn't quite amoritize out to the 1 in 50 year chance of your part of the gulf coast being destroyed.
For the record (and to stay on topic): impact by falling object is generally covered. Some go far enough to ensure you for falling aircraft (creepy), and possibly falling spacecraft (satellites is the idea, but who knows what will happen this July).
And yes, I used to sell property insurance
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Assuming typical velocity, an iron asteroid would be a mere 22 miles across. The radiation would only be two-thirds that of the porus asteroid at the same speed.
If this was indeed the impact crater that triggered the initial phase of the Great Extinction, then the low density/high energy strike would produce vastly more heat and therefore affect the climate that much more.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
made the case for a mostly iron meteor. The author's contention was that the object slowed due to air resistance, it would heat up. As is heated, the metal would have softenned. As it softenned, the metal would start to pancake like a dum-dum bullet. As it pancakes, its air resistance increases, causing it to slow down even more and heat up even faster, causing it to pancake even more.
:-)
Metal? Pancake? You sir have just described a flying saucer. So much for ending the Tungusta conspiracy theories
Table-ized A.I.
Two issues with this. First, I think whatever hit Tunguska was probably bigger. Second, unless this thing kills most of the major species on earth, it's probabaly nowhere near the record.
It may be the biggest confirmed meteor though.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
The evening of December 24th, 1995 I was soaking in one of the famous cliffside hot tubs at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. I heard a jetlike roar coming towards us from over the hills to the east. I looked up and saw, nearly overhead, what looked like the flame of welding torch, looking roughly an inch and a half or so long at arm's length, and quite low, perhaps 500-600 feet. At first I thought it was a jet fighter on afterburner, but I couldn't see a silhouette of an aircraft against the stars. As it passed over and out to sea, I saw it break into at least two pieces just before the flame went out. The pieces must have fallen into the water, but I didn't see or hear any splashes. Then I realized it was a meteor, and that I'd been close enough to hear it!
Sadly, I was also the only person in the hot tubs geeky enough to look up and see the whole thing and to be totally thrilled by this experience....
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Whoa whoa whoa...
Where's Pat Robertson? I need his opinion! Who's immorality caused this?
I bet it was those people over at digg....
A møøse once bit my sister
Technically a meteorite didn't streak across the sky; a meteor streaked across the sky. Once it hits Earth the pieces are meteorites, and before it entered the atmosphere it was an asteroid.
Saying a meteorite streaked across the sky is like saying ham likes to wallow in the mud.
Kevin Fox
After climbing a little higher, he found a large, glowing piece of rock. He walked around it, astonished, and from one angle you could see an unmistakable engraving on the side.
LEAVE THE PIRATES ALONE