[meteorite-list] When the Moon hits your eye like a really, really, really big pizza pie

[Sterling K. Webb]

Hi, List

Everybody had a different theory about
Carancas. I thought it was a fast entry of
a cylindrical shape. Peter Schultz at Brown
thought it was a fast entry of fragments
that "entrained" themselves like railroad
cars. The Russian theorist whose name flows
off the tongue but vanishes from my anglo-
phonic neurons thought it was a very slow
entry and huge fragments that went plop!
We all think we're right and we all disagree
(almost) totally.

Ain't science grand?

But, for Carl's question about the "boiling" of
the ground water that filled the crater, I have
an answer. First the outer surface of the
impactor was hot. The evidence is that it did
ablate almost to the impact site.

Second, its back half fragmented to powder
on impact and the front half dug the crater and
tossed dirt out. The impact energy heated the
fragments. Third. Carancas had a lot of troilite,
FeS, more than 15%.

When hot troilite is exposed to water, it
dissociates and generates hydrogen sulfide
(H2S) which bubbled violently up through the
crater water from the hot fragments and made
the awful stink that the villagers reported and
were ridiculed for. The water cooled everything
down in a few minutes and the gas dissipated
almost immediately, leaving no evidence of heat
or sulfurous fumes, just as the soon-corkscrewed
ablation trail that hung above the village was
blown away in 10-12 minutes.

Heat, yes, but not enough to boil the water.


Sterling K. Webb
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "JoshuaTreeMuseum" <joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 3:11 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] When the Moon hits your eye like a really, 
really,really big pizza pie


> Hi Carl, Eric:
>
> Wasn't it our own Sterling K. Webb that determined it was the 
> aerodynamic shape of the Carancas meteorite that was responsible for 
> the crater formation?  Something about the difference between a 
> frisbee and the flat bottomed reentry space capsules?
>
> Phil Whitmer
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