[meteorite-list] Meteorite Hits 14 Year Old Boy?

[Meteorites USA]

Very interesting article on this, kind of puts things into perspective.

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SOURCE: 
http://spacerubble.blogspot.com/2009/06/bad-reporting-on-meteor-strike.html

SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2009

Bad Reporting on Meteor strike
If you've been watching the news this week, you might have seen a 
fantastic report about a boy in Germany who was amazingly struck by a 
small fragment of the universe! According to initial reports, the 
pea-size meteorite was all that was left of the rock from space after 
mostly burning up in the atmosphere. The initial report, copied by all 
the on-line mainstream news organizations I looked at, stated the 
meteorite was traveling at a speed of 30,000 mph, with a loud bang and 
bright light struck a glancing blow to the boy, bouncing off him and 
burying itself into the road where it created a foot-wide mini-crater.

At first read, this is an amazing tale of survival just removed from a 
possible horrible death!

But lucky for me, I paid attention to my science and math studies in 
school. Did you? Do you recognize the warning signs of sensationalist 
reporting?

For  fun, go outside and find a pea-sized stone. Now, wander around and 
locate a nice patch of sandy soil. We won't even bother with a hard 
surface at this point. Next, the fun part! With all your might, throw 
that little stone into the sand and see what kind of crater it makes. 
With luck, you will see a tiny crater and watch some of the ejected 
material fly out.  Now try it on a driveway with asphalt. No such 
result, eh? Imagine with your mind now, how much force a stone that size 
would have to impart to create a foot-wide crater in that surface.

But wait- the asteroid WAS traveling at 30,000 mph, wasn't it? THAT 
should certainly give it enough energy!

Hmmm. Wait a minute though. Just how fast IS 30,000 mph? This is where 
your schooling should have come in handy. We need something going REALLY 
fast - like a bullet- to make a comparison.

Your average US Marine fighting in Afghanistan is shooting a .223 
caliber bullet from his rifle. The military .223 round is a little 
bigger than pea-sized, but good enough for our purposes. The .223 flies 
out the barrel at 2750 feet/second. If you know your math and how to 
tell time, we can compare these object speeds. 2750 f/s is very close to 
a half mile per second (2640 ft). So let's use that for easy comparison.

.5 mi./sec. times 60 seconds = 30 miles/minute. That bullet is going 
about 30 miles in one minute. Now, 30 mi./min. times 60 minutes = 1800 
miles/hour. So, our bullet is traveling about 1800 mph.

According to initial reports, the boy was hit in the hand. Now, I know 
that a .223 traveling 1800 mph hitting a boy's hand is going to do 
something more than leave a slight scar. If it doesn't take OFF his 
hand, he's going to lose a finger or AT LEAST go to the hospital for 
major surgery.

But the meteorite was supposedly traveling 30,000 mph. As opposed to a 
bullet at 1800 mph. At that speed, I think the boy would not only lose 
his hand, but the energy from that fast an object would have probably 
torn off his arm- if not obliterating him and leaving a much larger 
smoking hole in the ground. No wonder there was a loud sound- A bullet 
leaves a large crack because it breaks the speed of sound, creating a 
shock wave (the boom) at about 760 mph.

Well, the initial reports did say there was a foot sized crater, didn't 
they? Funny that- but while all the reports showed a smiling German boy 
holding his pea-sized rock, there were NO photos of the so-called 
crater... isn't that strange?

Well, with all of this thinking, I began to immediately suspect the 
story was false. Looking at the story today, I find that amateur 
astronomers and meteor collectors have been doing their own sleuthing, 
and I may be justified in my doubts.

Turns out that NO one has seen the so-called crater. And the supposed 
professional who examined the rock and declared it a meteorite, was a 
guy from the local public observatory. No professional space geologist 
has looked at this object yet. No one has ever known a small meteorite 
like this to have ever produced a small crater. The rules of Terminal 
Velocity show that these objects just ding onto the ground. It takes a 
stony or iron meteorite of significant weight to do damage such as the 
car damaged by a stony meteorite in New England a few years ago.

So we have a boy, 14 years old, reporting this incident, which happened 
to himself, with no witnesses, no authentic verification of the object, 
and no "smoking hole"... are you getting the picture?

The astronomical community is not convinced. And neither am I. Were you?
POSTED BY MARK DAYMONT AT 11:54 AM

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Regards,
Eric