[meteorite-list] Fireball Temperature?

[Chris Peterson]

Hi Eric-

It seems likely that in most cases, a burn of just a few seconds is 
sufficient to reduce more than 95% of the original mass to dust and gas. Of 
course, you need to define what the original mass actually is, since scale 
effects will become important as the mass increases. Also, a lot depends on 
how the original mass breaks up- and with peak forward ram pressures 
measured in tens or hundreds of MPa, most bodies do break up. That exposes 
much more surface area than just the outside of the original body, and 
accelerates the loss of material to ablation.

Chris

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


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Meteorites USA" <eric at meteoritesusa.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 3:59 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Fireball Temperature?


> Hi Laurence,
>
> Thanks for the response! I'm humbled by your participation on this 
> question... I appreciate it. I do have another question... ;) of course. 
> Given the extreme temperature, and the massive pressure exerted on the 
> meteoroid body while in it's incandescent state (ablation phase?), and 
> taking into account the very short duration of this "meteor" state 
> phenomena, would you agree that a 5-10 second "burn" would be sufficient 
> enough to ablate 90% of a larger body's original mass? Assuming of course 
> the body is an ordinary stone type meteoroid.
>
> It just seems like such a very short period of time for something to 
> sublimate into gases and physically ablate into such a small fraction of 
> it's original mass.
>
> Regards,
> Eric