Meteorite Hits Girl 505
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.
Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key. (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with this is that meteors are not hot. See this link [spacescience.com] and this one. [thursdaysclassroom.com] 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.
History of meteories falling to earth (Score:5, Informative)
According to a site that chronicles the history of meteorite attacks [branchmeteorites.com], there's a lot of wierd things than meteorites end up hitting...cows, horses, cars, farmers, etc.
Stupid People... (Score:1, Informative)
Terminal velocity (Score:3, Informative)
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
JON KATZ IS DYING FROM AIDS. HE GOT IT FROM TACO. (Score:1, Informative)
Mrs. Hodges: "But mine was much bigger" (Score:2, Informative)
"In 1954, Mrs. Ann Hodges, who was napping on her couch, was awakened very suddenly when a meteorite penetrated her roof and struck her on the thigh. The Hodges or Sylacauga meteorite, which weighs 8.5 pounds and is 7 by 5 inches in diameter, can be viewed in replica form at the museum. The original is in the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Sylacauga is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records since this is the only case of a meteorite hitting a living person."
Althoug she was not hit directly. The meteorite bounced of some other junk in her house before striking her.
York, City of Meteorites (Score:2, Informative)
Some people seem to think so. Sadly, such impacts generally turn out to have far more mundane explanations [bbc.co.uk].
Re:Not the first time . . . (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
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:Wow (Score:1, Informative)
A French farmer and some of his cattle were killed in his cottage when it collapsed due to a strike. In 1827 and 1870 in India, two men were hit (one on the arm, the other was stunned).
The 1908 blast in Tunguska, Siberia, picked people and their tents up and threw them through the air. In 1929, a member of a wedding party in Yugoslavia was killed. A boy in Uganda was hit by one of 48 stones that fell together in 1992.
And Mrs. Annie Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama, was the one struck in her house in 1954 while resting.
There are a _lot_ on the list from China (longer records), nearly as many close calls (only a few meters away--like the guy who watched his mailbox get nailed), and dozens of building strikes (houses were hit in Wethersfield, Conn., in 1971 and 1982).
If these things are irregularly shaped, tumbling action would cause quite a bit of drag and slow them down even more. Also, if they come in shallow, there'll be a lot more time to slow than if they come in steeply. That would also account for some of the reports of hot objects--a long, shallow approach has more "flight" time after ablation (combusting gases from the surface) stops.
Re:And she didn't move??? (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key. (Score:3, Informative)
A-B-L-A-T-I-O-N
A-B-L-A-T-E-D
Re:Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key. (Score:3, Informative)
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.