A chunk of ice that big should be easy to save long enough to be examined; they should give a few samples to NOAA, say, and let them inspect it.
Oh my... we poor spaniards don't know how to do a chemical analysis of a block of ice, isn't it?;)
This is old news to me. Two years ago we had a real "storm" of those ice blocks failing from our skies. The vast majority of those events were... err... jokes (one of the ice blocks had a "peculiar" form, which corresponds to a mineral water bottle sold here;)). A few of them (the first ones which were found) were determined NOT to be jokes, and were analysed by the CSIC and the INM (National Institute of Meteorology. Dr. Martinez Frias was the head of the CSIC research team. His team came to the conclusion that some unknown atmospheric phenomenon was the origin of the so-called "ice stones"; this point was rebated by the meteorologists, and there was some ugly name-calling between both research groups.
The results of Dr. Frias investigations can be found at this page (it's in spanish, but there is an english version here.
To find the original news reports of the "ice stones" impacts just do a search for "aerolitos hielo" on google. You'll find a lot of references (in spanish), including a HOW-TO build your own ice stone, and some points about the argument between the CSIC and INM teams.
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A chunk of ice that big should be easy to save long enough to be examined; they should give a few samples to NOAA, say, and let them inspect it.
;)
;)). A few of them (the first ones which were found) were determined NOT to be jokes, and were analysed by the CSIC and the INM (National Institute of Meteorology. Dr. Martinez Frias was the head of the CSIC research team. His team came to the conclusion that some unknown atmospheric phenomenon was the origin of the so-called "ice stones"; this point was rebated by the meteorologists, and there was some ugly name-calling between both research groups.
Oh my... we poor spaniards don't know how to do a chemical analysis of a block of ice, isn't it?
This is old news to me. Two years ago we had a real "storm" of those ice blocks failing from our skies. The vast majority of those events were... err... jokes (one of the ice blocks had a "peculiar" form, which corresponds to a mineral water bottle sold here
The results of Dr. Frias investigations can be found at this page (it's in spanish, but there is an english version here.
To find the original news reports of the "ice stones" impacts just do a search for "aerolitos hielo" on google. You'll find a lot of references (in spanish), including a HOW-TO build your own ice stone, and some points about the argument between the CSIC and INM teams.