[meteorite-list] Chelyabinsk at White House today

[Chris Peterson]

While I have great respect for Boslough's modeling of large impactors, 
I'm not convinced his models are really optimized for such small bodies 
as this one. More to the point, his models typically start with 
hypothetical values for the material properties of the bodies, and then 
calculate their atmospheric dynamics. I don't think the material 
properties of this body have been well enough established at this point 
to make much more than an educated guess about the sort of behavior we 
would have seen were the path somewhat different.

In fact, a steeper angle might also have resulted in a higher 
detonation. The actual shock wave appears to have dissipated very 
quickly, as we'd expect from such a small total energy.

Understand, I'm not saying Boslough is wrong, only that I remain 
skeptical of any strong conclusions until a good deal more analysis 
takes place, and a good deal more is known about the body that exploded 
over Chelyabinsk.

Chris

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

On 3/25/2013 8:31 PM, Kelly Beatty wrote:
> Chris...
>
>> It's extremely doubtful that this body could have done all that much
>> more damage. It simply wasn't big enough, or strong enough.
>
> I spoke at some length about this with Mark Boslough, a Sandia Labs expect in
> airborne shock waves (read: bombs). he's the one who modeled Tunguska a few
> years ago:
> http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/newsblog/12662606.html
>
> what Mike Farmer says agrees with Boslough's assessment: had the impactor come
> in more vertically, its terminal burst would have been lower, and its shock
> wave (and fireball) would have been focused on the ground directly below,
> creating substantially more damage. details:
> http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/Update-on-the-Russian-Mega-Meteor-195553631
> .html
>
>
> clear skies,
> Kelly