[meteorite-list] A funny paper ... with applications (maybe)!

[MexicoDoug]

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?arXiv:1204.0162

Dear List;

Just saw the above paper, which I'm convinced somewhere has a flaw, but 
I don't have a peaceful moment to go through it;

Basically it says,

If you are a policeman in a traffic-trap observing a clever physicist 
approaching a stop sign in his car who sneezes: because the car is 
somewhat distant, your mind is really not interpreting its speed, but 
rather its angular velocity.  The conclusion is that any minor 
distraction such as another car or bird, etc., can create a major 
misinterpretation to the brain which is tricked into filling in details 
to make sense of what you saw, but did not observe with absolute 
perfection.

The author claims special recognition by the government of California 
for his innovative analysis, which we expected to accept an official 
reviewer of physics papers.

Now, if the paper is actually not in error (which I am not saying is 
the case), it if you replace the policeman with an meteor observer, and 
the stop sign with the sudden deceleration upon hitting the ablation 
zone of the atmosphere ... and then disappearence into dark flight/fall,

... it would be fun to compare the results and see if his paper would 
have been more interesting had he been in a shooting star going 
incandescent and what the perception where it landed in relation to the 
meteoric counterpart of the stop sign.

Although it was posted on what in many countries is called "The Day of 
the Innocents", April 1, and titled "Proof of Innocence", in the USA 
the day is known as "April Fool's", a quite disagreeable connotation, 
there may actually be something to it?  You can always think of the 
illusion the brain interprets when looking up a train track, when two 
rails in parallel instead look like they converge into a point ... the 
same illusion that give us a meteor radiant.  Now here's another 
practical example to compare, if true.

Kindest wishes
Doug