Thanks momtothree.
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Posted on 05/09/2013 4:42:22 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Only 3% of all recorded meteorites that have struck the earth were seen falling.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Very cool,thanks.
Possible ping list worthy?
That is way too high. There is no way 3% have been seen.
Maybe they’re estimating those seen but unreported as part of the 3%.
How would you then know they were seen?
I'm thinking that most of the world's skies are not viewable by humans most of the time, due to clouds or geography. Right off, 2/3 of the world's surface is water, so there aren't many people looking up in those areas far from land. For the skies that are viewable, most people live in areas where the light pollution obscurs all but the brightest objects. Then there is the greatest light polluter of all, the sun. I did once see what I presumed to be a meteor during the day, but it was short, quick, and over. In 47 years I've seen thousands of meteors at night, and one during the day.
Finally, statistics. Most of the best viewable times coincide with more than 99% of the human population being asleep or inside. And even if you are outside at 3am on a great viewing night, what are the odds that you will be observing that particular section of sky, during that very short duration of time?
3% just seems illogically high.
Yep, it’s there. Listed as “Weston, USA - 150kg” (the actual location was Weston, CT), being one of two seen falling that year, the other in Russia.
Thanks for posting that. I only vaguely remember the quote (which apparently is in some dispute; i.e., whether he said it that way or at all) and I had to look it up. As a child, I would’ve agreed wholeheartedly with him if he said it. Thought the very idea was preposterous and illogical. Amazing mankind only fully appreciated the reality quite recently.
Good call, thanks momtothree! Extra to APoD members.
Rain of Iron and Ice:
The Very Real Threat of
Comet and Asteroid Bombardment
by John S. Lewis On November 27,1919, a meteorite fell into Lake Michigan near the Michigan shore. "Residents of Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, South Bend, Grand Haven, and other Western Michigan cities fled from their homes in panic, fearing an earthquake. Houses were shaken, the country was illuminated as by a bright sun's rays, so all-enveloping it was impossible to tell from which direction the flare came, the earth trembled for half a moment and then came a deep prolonged rumbling as of a terrific explosion." (p 159)
This event came as a surprise, as I've never heard it recounted by any of my elderly relatives, and most of them died before I read about it in this book. A number of other such impacts, including some which hit or nearly hit people, ships, animals etc, are described in this book, which I recommend. My review on Amazon is still there, but much shorter than I remember...
Tunguska 13 grams. Really? It seemed bigger.
Tunguska was an air burst very little made it to the ground in a sizable piece
It’s an example of lying with the truth. Yes, perhaps less than a half an ounce was all that was recovered, but that gives a totally inaccurate view of the magnitude of the event, or worse, it gives the impression that a gumball can level hundreds of square miles of forestland!
That’s probably the biggest piece ever found. :’)
not what they were before impact. What did I do to you to use such wording as this:
"It’s an example of lying with the truth."
You?
You did nothing even remotely resembling that!
Please forgive me if I even sounded like that was my thought!
My point was that the author of the piece so grossly decoupled the magnitude of the impact from the sized of the bolide that arrived in the earth's atmosphere that a casual reader would think that either a marble could level a city, or Tunguska caused no discernible damage.
That is not even approaching reality at either end.
By declaring a few scorched fragments to be the entirety of the impactors, meaningful information is so grossly distorted that even a politician should blush at trying to put that one over on the public.
A better metric would be estimated mass to have entered the atmosphere.
It's as if saying striking nothing sunk the Titanic, simply because no fragment of the iceberg was recovered!
Yeah. I screwed up. Thank you for understanding.
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