Possible Meteorite Leaves a Crater In Latvia

Several readers made sure we know about the possible meteorite that crashed into a field in northern Latvia yesterday. It left a crater 9m across and 3m deep according to the AP; 15m x 5m according to AFP; or 20m x 10m according to CNN. Sky News reporting includes a video recorded while approaching the smoking crater on foot; something is burning in its center. Xinhua has a brief mention with a good portrait of the crater in daylight, with people standing on its rim for perspective. Various outlets report that local authorities tested for radiation and found levels to be normal. Some quote an expert who estimates that, if it was a meteorite, it was probably around 1m in diameter when it hit. Update 16:40 GMT by SM: As many readers have pointed out, this has been declared a hoax.
Update: 10/27 16:41 GMT by KD : Swedish mobile phone operator Tele2 has now fessed up to pulling off the hoax.

Hoax

[NtroP]

It's been reported as a hoax.

Re:Hoax

[arose]

Yep, apparently they found shovel and foot prints as well as rocks that have been dug around and aluminum powder.

Re:Hoax

[hammeraxe]

It has been reported as hoax, indeed. http://www.delfi.lv/news/national/politics/zinatnieki-mazsalaca-visticamak-nav-nokritis.d?id=27621943 [delfi.lv] This is the original story in Latvian, although it does not seem very reliable to me. They claim that it is a strange coincidence that there was someone with a camera near the crash site, but hey, every kid's got a camera these days. I suppose we'll have to wait until the official investigation is over

Re:LATVIA? AND SOMEONE NOTICED ??

[RaceProUK]

2.2 million of them in July this year, according to Wikipedia.

Bad astronomy

[Kell Bengal]

As Phil Platt pointed out in his book, meteors (unless they're really huge) are typically cold to the touch by the time they hit the ground. Even if it had enough kinetic energy to make a huge crater, the meteor would have pulverised itself and its fragments quickly cooled. Check out his whole site at http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/index.html [badastronomy.com]

I'm calling hoax on this one.

Re:Investigation

[TheDarkMaster]

Google translator can't do most of grammar. As example, if you try to translate something on English to my language (Brazilian Portuguese), the grammar on process is killed without mercy. The same occurs on Brazilian to English

Re:As Long As It's Just Latvia

[gijoel]

Why the fuck is this marked insightful? Don't you kids read comics [wikipedia.org] anymore?

And another thing get the hell off my lawn.

Re:Hoax

[KenAndCorey]

In English: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_re_eu/eu_latvia_meteorite [yahoo.com]

Re:Bad astronomy

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh... not quite.

It depends on the heat capacity of the meteorite. Some are rather light -- like pumice. Some with high nickle content are dense and have high heat capacity.

I remember one that broke up over a frozen North American lake a couple of years back, and the many small fingernail-sized fragments melted into the ice-covered lake that then refroze, embedding the meteorite fragment.

Re:Hoax

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

The Bad Astronomer [discovermagazine.com] says it's fake.

Re:Hoax Hoax Hoax

[TaggartAleslayer]

Hey, got any foil left over from your hat? You may need to wrap your logic up and put it in the fridge. I think it's started to spoil.

Re:Smoking crater

[Big Hairy Ian]

I suspect its the updated crop circle app
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8326483.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Re:Bad astronomy

[careysub]

Wait, meteors that hit the ground are cold to the touch? That doesn't make sense - they enter the atmosphere, and as we know objects entering the atmosphere travel so fast that they get hot...real hot...so hot that our space ships need to have heat shields to keep the folks inside from getting burnt to a crisp...which makes it not cold to the touch. So when the rock hits the ground why would it become cold all of a sudden? Maybe if it sat around in cold climate for a while but after touch-down it should be very hot.

There is a difference between a space vehicle, which is as light as possible and hollow, and a meteor which is solid rock (or, much more rarely, metal). The heat shield is thin and light (comparatively speaking) but keeps everything inside quite cool despite a very lengthy heating period (due to the shallow re-entry angle of manned vehicles, and most unmanned ones, which cannot stand severe deceleration forces).

A meteor (one meter across or less) typically enters at a steep angle, decelerates rapidly (in several seconds) at a few hundred Gs, and becomes a rock falling under the influence of gravity through the lower atmosphere same as any other rock of similar size dropped from a high-altitude airplane.

For those several seconds a very small part of the rock gets very hot indeed - a thin layer vaporizes, and a thin layer melts. But it is physically impossible for the bulk of the rock to get significantly heated in the few seconds of re-entry, conduction is far too slow. During the longer part of its descent (when it is simply falling through the air for a few tens of seconds), there is enough time for the thin molten surface layer to get cooled down to near normal temperatures by the cold airflow. Then when it hits the ground within a minute or two there is enough time for the icy cold interior to cool down the surface to frigid temperatures.

The special effect of burning a pyrotechnic in the crater was perfect to take in the ignorant, but is laughable to anyone knowing something about meteors.