'Meteorite' Hits Girl

BBC ^ | 8-27-2002

[MD_Willington_1976]

"The stone could have come from Mars, according to expert on Earth impacts Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University."

Ya.. and it could be a petrified TURD from an airliner...

[Republicus2001]

Stones fall from sky:

when i used to sell hifi, and trying to get the customer to buy an extended warranty, we'd solemnly remind them that "million dollar planes fall from the sky"!....sometimes it worked ....

[Joe Hadenuf]

Could have been, but we don't know.

Even with a mere rock/stone that size, I could overhand throw that baby onto someone's foot, and I guarantee, it's going to ruin their day. I have a pretty good arm, pitched for 5 years as a youngin, but I am no meteor hurler...

[mhking]

LOL, someday I will learn to automatically ignore anyone who cites something from the laughable Armageddon in a thread on science.

I know that was pseudobabble - I wasn't citing that as an accurate source. I just mentioned how the notion of a meteorite "hitting" one person brought that sequence to mind.

Still, I would think that something that dropped from orbit and survived to reach the ground would have one of two things happen: A) the speed would be such that it would do bodily injury to the person hit, or B) the heat from said object would do bodily injury to the person hit.

I'm not quite that dense! (at least to people other than my wife...)

[Cultural Jihad]

Or life insurance against lightning strikes!

[HELLRAISER II]

That's very interesting, thanks for setting me straight. I would have thought that it would have done a lot more damage than that.

[TopQuark]

Stones fall from sky: Women hit hardest. You are absolutely correct: just like wars, this happens only because of male domination. If only the Earth were ruled by females, there would be no wars and meteorites would not be falling from the sky.

[ArrogantBustard]

I'm not quite that dense!

Funny that you should mention density, because it's important. An object falling from orbit has to get through several miles of atmosphere. That passage through atmosphere involves resistance to its motion; the resistance is a function of the object's speed, shape, size, surface characteristics, and the density and viscosity of the atmosphere. The deceleration of the object is a function of the object's own mass, and the force of resistance applied to it by the atmosphere. F=M*a, remember? In the case of a meteor, none of those quantities is a constant. The passage through atmosphere initially generates intense heat, which burns, melts, or ablates material from the meteor. If it's small enough, it will "burn up" before hitting the ground. A larger object will be decelerated until it reaches its "terminal velocity", at which its weight equals the resistive force from the atmosphere. For an object the size shown in the girl's picture, that could be in the 30-40 mph range. A much larger object will strike the ground before being decelerated to its terminal velocity, producing results like Meteor Crater in Arizona.

[Calvin Locke]

Not to mention that we just passed through a bunch of cosmic pollution left by a comet that's going to destroy
all life as we know it.

Oh, wait.

That only applies to American capitalists.

Nevermind.

[Pagey]

"We will have it mounted in a glass presentation case so she can keep it for the rest of her life"

Oh sure, what world are they living in?They will be made an offer they can't refuse and they'll forget it ever occurred.I bet they've already been inundated with requests and demands.They will see how the world really works in no short time.LOL

[Calvin Locke]

You forgot about all that CO2 that the US is putting in to the atmosphere. Created such drag that it dropped the
speed down. So slow, as a matter of fact, that it had time to cool down as well. I'm surprised a storm cell didn't spring up around it.

There's always that girl that took the family car out for a spin and had a quarter panel destroyed by a meteorite.

Or that woman that was blown out of bed by one crashing through her roof.

The only known person to be hit by man-made space junk was a woman too.

Any reason to believe that there is a pattern developing???

Or is it just that females are gawndurn magnetically attractive?

[plain talk]

Not buying it. Read Post #29.

[A. Pole]

That should have put a hole in her foot the size of a 357 exit wound....

Not if it small and not very dense. Even gun bullets slow down over the distance. You guys forget about the resistence of the air.

[mhking]

OK, now that actually makes sense. And given the resistance, terminal velocity and deceleration the 30-40 mph speed is not out of line. And given that, at 30-40 mph, while the girl may get a stinger, bruise or perhaps a cut from an object like that, the "hole through the foot" theory goes out the window.

Fair enough.

[ArrogantBustard]

My post #26 shows the aftermath of a ~20lb iron meteorite striking an automobile. That one would have hurt.

This lady got hit by an 8.5lb iron meteorite, in 1954. It passed through the roof of her house, first. Big time owie.

[blam]

"Not to mention that we just passed through a bunch of cosmic pollution left by a comet that's going to destroy all life as we know it."

RightWhale can testify that you don't want to get me started on this. lol (This is one of my favorites, being a catastrophist and such)

[blam]

"This lady got hit by an 8.5lb iron meteorite, in 1954. It passed through the roof of her house, first. Big time owie."

Yup. That's the Alabama woman I was talking about.

[RightWhale]

You get hit with meteorites every time you go outdoors. Think about it.

[WRhine]

That should have put a hole in her foot the size of a 357 exit wound....

Yes, or worse. A direct hit even by a small metorite should cause great trauma.

[RightWhale]

The CIA, and National Park Service, and somebody from the UN waving that obscene 1967 Outer Space Treaty should have by now already made their claim to the object.