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

[lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu]

The story was on the Mike Huckabee radio show this morning.

No I do not normally listen to him if that thought crossed anyone's mind.

Larry

> Wow.   This has gone from a side trip to WTFia to a full-blown
> start-forwarding-the-mail experience.  The behavior of the media doesn't
> surprise me in the slightest, but up until now I thought the Bad Astronomy
> guy was using that name in jest.  Thanks for the update.
>
>
> On 6/16/09 12:47 PM, "JoshuaTreeMuseum" <joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z126/tboswell/0667086000.jpg?t=1245180536
>> http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z126/tboswell/article-1192503-054F2E9500000
>> 5DC-83.jpg?
>> http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z126/tboswell/SNN1235HH-380_823358a.jpg?t=1
>> 245180707
>> http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z126/tboswell/article-1192503-054F2E9500000
>> 5DC-34.jpg?
>> http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z126/tboswell/_45916040_cen_meteoriteboy_03
>> .jpg?t=1245180773
>>
>> Here are some pics from this story on our young P.T. Barnum  which at
>> last
>> count had over 100 article links on Google News.   I haven't read them
>> all,
>> they pretty much rehash the original story with some added
>> embellishments.
>> Incredibly, every single story I've read makes the same misquote:
>> Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, said:
>> "It's
>> a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and
>> scientists."  According to the original  German article, the actual
>> quote
>> is: " If it's a real meteorite, it's therefore very valuable to
>> collectors
>> and scientists".  What a difference one word makes!
>>
>>    It's almost as if not a single one of the journalists bothered to
>> check
>> the primary source story. Probably not surprising since it was in German
>> and
>> would require some effort to translate.  More work than I'd want to do
>> for
>> $8 an hour (what I was offered to write  for the South Bend , (IN)
>> Tribune.)
>>
>> Anyway it's a fun story to follow, and I'm curious to see how the Susan
>> Boyle of the meteorite world ends up.  Probably more like the Octo Mom
>> narrative.
>>
>> So, whaddya think, a carbonaceous chondrite, with black exterior and
>> interior?  I'm pretty sure the filled in pothole in front of the kid is
>> supposed to be the impact crater.  (LOL!)
>>
>> In all the stories, mention is given to only one person saying this is a
>> Newtonian impossibility: Darryl Pitt who is given the role of voice in
>> the
>> wilderness by MSNBC in one of the earlier stories.
>>
>> Bad Astronomy's (Discover) Phil Plait believes that an exploding
>> fireball
>> increased the velocity of the pea sized stone (hasn't this theory been
>> debunked on the List?) and that the kid's injury was from shrapnel from
>> the
>> asphalt crater. And he says this with a straight face!  Phil got a
>> little
>> miffed at me for saying that no real astronomer would believe any part
>> of
>> this shaggy dog story.
>>
>> Phil Whitmer
>>
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>
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