[meteorite-list] New Moroccan fall

[Chris Peterson]

Impacts that are audible are exceedingly rare events. Except for the utterly 
bizarre, and possibly singular example of Carancas, I don't know of any 
meteorite fall that was audible to anybody more than a few meters from the 
impact (I would guess a few Sikhote-Alin craters produced a fair bit of 
noise).

If people actually heard the impact when they were too far away to 
immediately identify the site, this was a crater forming event- possible, 
but not very likely. Far more likely is that people heard sonic booms 
echoing around hills and valleys- sounds that would be far more impressive 
(and "scarier") than any impact sound.

Of course, if there was a hypervelocity impact, people will be coming from 
all over the world to study it- and there may well be no meteorites at all.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Abdelaziz Alhyane" <abdelaziz_alhyane at yahoo.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>; "Chris Peterson" 
<clp at alumni.caltech.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 11:50 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] New Moroccan fall


> Yes, poeple heard the impact and this is why they are scared, Aziz