[meteorite-list] New Concord Meteorite, Hot and Cold Again

[Michael L Blood]

Hi Sterling - sorry I misread your intended meaning.
        Best wishes, Michael


on 7/23/05 11:53 PM, Sterling K. Webb at kelly at bhil.com wrote:

> Hi, Michael,
> 
>   I didn't mean to be PRO or CON on the hot or cold question. I offered no
> judgement. I am inclined to the SOMETIMES HOT  school myself.
>   I only meant to demostrate a pecularity of the way in which human perception
> and conception interact so strongly and the difficulty it poses for evaluating
> witness reports from the past..
> 
> Sterling K. Webb
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> 
> Michael L Blood wrote:
> 
>> Regardless of endless research on the color of lightning, there
>> are many credible DOCUMENTED cases of hot meteorites - including
>> documented incidences by Nininger.
>>         One recent event demonstrating such a phenomenon was one of
>> the Portalas Valley stones that melted a plastic bag it landed on.
>>         Best wishes, Michael
>> 
>> on 7/23/05 11:53 AM, Sterling K. Webb at kelly at bhil.com wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi, Everybody!
>>> 
>>>   Ah, the old meteorite hot or cold debate, again.
>>> 
>>>   How good are human witnesses? Not very. We know that.
>>> 
>>>   Specifically, how good are they at making specific qualitative
>>> observations? Are their perceptions unbiased by their notions about the
>>> object observed?
>>> 
>>>   The answer to that is no.
>>> 
>>>   My example is lightning. If I ask you "What color is lightning?" I will
>>> get a variety of answers based on your perceptions of lightning AND your
>>> knowledge of it. Most will say "white." Many will add to it, "blue-white."
>>> There will be few others, about 5%, the most naive and uneducated observers,
>>> who will add a tinge of red, orange, yellow, usually with an "-ish" tacked
>>> on the end.
>>> 
>>>   The actual color of lightning is white, of course, since the central
>>> core plasma of a bolt is at a temperature between a minimum of 20,000 and
>>> usually closer to 30,000 degrees Kelvin.
>>> 
>>>   Many years ago (long before Google), I did an exhaustive search (months)
>>> of all the historic literature of the world, every language, every culture
>>> (available in translation) for descriptions of the color of lightning.
>>> English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, etc., medieval and
>>> modern up to 1800 AD. The Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, Mesopotamian, Hindu,
>>> Chinese, everybody! (I just want to impress you with the thoroughness of the
>>> search.)
>>> 
>>>   I was able to find 974 descriptions of lightning color, some from every
>>> time period and literature searched. I probably could have found thousands,
>>> but since the results were conclusive, I quit the increasingly difficult
>>> task. Absolutely, without any doubt, before the year 1800 AD, all lightning
>>> on the planet Earth was RED in color, or red-orange, or "bloody" or other
>>> descriptive terms clearly derived from the color red.
>>> 
>>>   Obviously, some major change in the physical character of electricity or
>>> the nature of the planet's atmosphere had occurred, hadn't it? Between 1790
>>> and 1900, lightning changed color from RED to WHITE or blue-white. There's
>>> no doubt about it.
>>> 
>>>   What happened? Well, before 1800 AD, everybody "knew" that lightning was
>>> "fire." By 1900 AD, everybody "knew" that lightning was "electricity."
>>> That's all. Before 1800 AD, there was no electricity, so how could we know
>>> waht color lightning was? Fire is red; electricity is white or blue-white in
>>> discharge. Ah, now we know!
>>> 
>>>   Human perception is not "influenced" by human conception or
>>> pre-convictions, it is totally OVERWHELMED by it. Human beings only see what
>>> they BELIEVE they are seeing. They pay no attention at all to what is
>>> actually there or to the data presented to their senses, correcting
>>> "obvious" errors on the fly before the perception even reaches
>>> consciousness.
>>> 
>>>   Meteorites? Flamin' Fireballs, Batman! Burning, blinding, fiery bolides!
>>> Yada yada. Of course, meteorites are hot! It's surprising they're not
>>> molten, like the standard Hollywood B-movie of the 1950's, with its glowing
>>> craters. John Carradine as The Professor says gravely and deep-voiced,
>>> "We'll have to wait until the meteorite cools." It's OBVIOUS that meteorites
>>> are hot, so they are...
>>> 
>>>   Sarcasm aside, it's to be expected that there would be many reports of
>>> hot or at least warm meteorites. Warm is probably a compromise made between
>>> the "knowledge" that they are hot and the strange fact that you can't feel
>>> any heat!
>>> 
>>>   UFO's?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Sterling K. Webb
>>> --------------------------------------------
>>>   PS: Out of 974 references to lightning color, the was ONE reference to
>>> "blue lightnings," in the eighth century early Slavic epic poem, The Song Of
>>> Igor's Campaign, the oldest known piece of literature in anything resembling
>>> the Russian language, at the furthest Eastern reach of European peoples at
>>> the time. One good observer in millennia.
>>> --------------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> 
>>> AL Mitterling wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi Mark and list,
>>>> 
>>>> I find the statement below hard to believe, because of the time to reach
>>>> the specimen and it being in moist soil. Perhaps the sun was shinning
>>>> (according to Mark's other posts it was partly cloudy) and it had a chance
>>>> to heat the black crust before the men reached it. Best!
>>>> 
>>>> --AL
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
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> 
> 

 
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