And this one is just as cool:
Argentine Meteor Show
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Tag Archives: meteor
UFO shoots down February 15, 2013 meteor?
Here’s the evidence:
I got a problem with all this. Firsties, I don’t believe there are aliens with super technology floating around Earth’s atmosphere. Just call it a hunch. Secondies, even if they were, shooting it down where they did probably caused more human damage than if they had just let hit a little farther in Siberia, or possibly even the ocean. It wasn’t really that big of a deal. If they were smart enough to fly all over the universe to hang out discretely, they’re smart enough to know that it wasn’t that big of a threat.
Given that, the only option left was the Russians “intercepting” it, which the Russian government actually did say they had done. The Russians do claim to have the fastest missile on Earth right now, the BrahMos. It travels up to Mach 3.0 supposedly. Pretty dang impressive huh? The meteor would have been traveling at about Mach 11 and they would have had about 20 seconds to launch and hit it. That’s all the warning the world got.
Do the math.
Fireball Alert!
This is a little unusual.
NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office has issued an alert for the Cleveland area regarding an apparent meteor strike. Here’s some of the evidence:
The circled blips are echoes of heat from the fireball. NASA has pinned the area to be concerned with down more specifically.:
Then, there’s the strike date, 8/8/2011.
Huh?
Today’s the 18th.
Gotta read a little closer to figure this one out. The MEO is not warning us that a fireball is going to fall from the sky, so people would keep their eyes on the sky. They are warning everyone that one has already fallen so keep your eyes out for rocks.
OK.
Wisconsin fireball
This is just too cool:
First assumption is it’s a meteor.
Manson Crater
My friend, while reciting from A Short History of Nearly Everything
However, I was very quickly corrected. He was referring to the Manson Crater. According to more than one web page, the impact crater is about 23 to 24 miles wide. However, the impact it had was a little bit more than that. Something like this:
Now, although a crude rendering. It illustrates the impact of a large meteor. Everything in Iowa was incinerated. Everything in the red blot was killed pretty much instantly. Everything else in the picture probaby was shortly after that as the climate was changed instantly forever.
What really gets me is I’d never heard of this thing until my friend mentioned it. This disturbed me because he could care less about astronomy and I love it. I’m supposed to be the one telling him fantastic tales. He got me on this one and I didn’t like it. So I did a little reading too. For some inexplicable reason, MOST sources, when discussing end-of-life meteor strikes, never mention the Manson Crater. They mention a few big ones from the past. But, for some reason, the life-ending impact of Manson doesn’t cut the grade.
Which makes me wonder……
How many other huge meteor strikes have there been that are either unreported or undiscovered? The rarely-documented ones are the ones that bother me most. You always hear of a couple of impacts that wiped out life on Earth. A couple in one hundred million years is incredibly rare. Four or five still fall in the incredibly rare category. But, the way I look at it, the impact of the impact is felt for hundreds or thousands of years. So, if there are, say five, that covers five thousand years, then the chances are getting somewhat normal. That puts it around 1 in 100,000 of living in a period of lifelessness. Or, to put it another way, being dead during said period. To put that in perspective, you more likely to die from this scenario than:
- Chance of contracting the human version of mad cow disease: 1 in 40,000,000
- Chance of dying from a mountain lion attack in California: 1 in 32,000,000
- Chance of dying from a shark attack: 1 in 300,000,000
- Chance of dying from being bitten by a dog: 1 in 700,000
- Chance of dying from being bitten or struck by mammals (other than dogs or humans): 1 in 4,235,477
- Chance of dying from choking on food: 1 in 370,035
- Chance of dying from contact with a venomous animal or plant: 1 in 3,441,325
- Chance of dying from contact with hot tap water: 1 in 5,005,564
- Chance of dying from exposure to forces of nature (heat, cold, lightning, earthquake, flood): 1 in 225,107
- Chance of dying from food poisoning: 1 in 3,000,000
- Chance of dying from ignition or melting of nightwear: 1 in 30,589,555
- Chance of dying from legal execution: 1 in 3,441,325
- Chance of dying from overexertion, travel or privation: 1 in 1,428,377
- Chance of dying from parts falling off an airplane: 1 in 10,000,000
- Chance of dying from SARS in the United States: 1 in 100,000,000
- Chance of dying in a fireworks accident: 1 in 1,000,000
- Chance of dying in a terrorist attack while visiting a foreign country: 1 in 650,000
- Chance of dying in an airplane accident: 1 in 354,319
- Chance of dying in an explosion: 1 in 107,787
- Odds of a person in the military winning the Medal of Honor: 11,000 to 1
- Odds of an American speaking Cherokee: 15000 to 1
- Odds of becoming a saint: 20,000,000 to 1
- Odds of becoming president: 10,000,000 to 1
- Odds of being an astronaut: 13,200,000 to 1
- Odds of being killed by lightning: 2,320,000 to 1
- Odds of being killed on a 5-mile bus trip: 500,000,000 to 1
- Odds of being struck by lightning: 576,000 to 1
- Odds of drowning in a bathtub: 685,000 to 1
- Odds of getting a royal flush in poker on first five cards dealt: 649,740 to 1
- Odds of getting canonized: 20,000,000 to 1
- Odds of spotting a UFO today: 3,000,000 to 1
- Odds of winning an Olympic medal: 662,000 to 1
- Odds of winning the California lottery: 13,000,000 to 1
So, I think we should demand to know why the government is covering up all the cataclysmic impacts they are aware of.
Meteorite boy
This story has been making the rounds:
“Then, a split second after that, there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder.”
My first thought was, how cool is that? Wish I had could have been hit by something cool like that! Now, that’s a tale he can tell the rest of his life. He’ll be on Letterman and can write a book. On and on and on it went.
But then my second thought was, how can a pebble traveling 30,000 mph hit flesh, bounce off, and blow a crater in the ground? I mean, flesh isn’t the hardest surface known. Bullets don’t go that fast and they have no problem going right through flesh. Well, it seems I’m not alone:
The physics of the comment make a lot more sense than the story itself. Then, most reports go on to point the history of meteor(ite) hits in the past. Well, there’s only one documented:
An orange-sized meteor crashed through the roof of a house in Alabama, in the USA, in 1954.
It bounced off furniture and then hit a woman who was asleep at the time.
I think Gerritt either got hit by a ricoche or a fragment of the explosion.
But he still has a very cool story to tell.
Austin fireball
This is just too cool. The FAA acknowledges one of these hokey UFO stories. Here’s what prompted the story:
Now, my first assumption was indeed debris from the recent satellite collision. However, the FAA insists that is not the case. Im not sure how they know for sure it’s not. But, that’s their story. More likely, it’s a meteor. Either way, they can’t explain it and it didn’t seem to hit the ground, so there probably will never be an explanation. Oh well, it’ll make for another good conspiracy theory I’m sure!
Quick edit: There was also reports of a seperate fireball in central/eastern kentucky. This is way cooler because one of the reports came from a town about twenty minutes from here. Unfortunately, no one in my family saw it. 
Also, there are seperate reports that the FAA is indeed saying this could be debris from the satellite collision. I tend to think it might be. That was a lot of metal that got shot in all kinds of directions. Although I trust they know where some of it is, I’m sure there’s a lot they’re still trying to find. And, given an unplanned explosion, some of it would have careened towards Earth.
QUICK UPDATE: February 19, 2009: Authorities are pretty certain at this time it was a meteor and not debris. Mainly because they think they may have found some of the remnants of the fireball near Waco. Following the comments on the story’s source, it seems quite a few people are reluctant to believe it’s easily explained and seem to prefer it be forever unknown ( read, UFO ).
Meteor strike in Saskatoon
Fox ran a neat story about a meteor strike in Canada. They ran a neat pic with it. However, the real thing is much more exciting to watch:
Watch the Taurids!
Just in time to give everyone a relief from the elections, the Taurids apparently will be making a show starting Wednesday. My own experience with the Taurids is that this is the one to watch. Although the Perseids get more PR, the Taurids can be a lot more spectacular to watch. They don’t have quite the volume as the Perseids, but they can deliver some pretty impressively sized ones which the Perseids don’t usually deliver. The best flashes I’ve ever seen were the Taurids several years ago.
Just giving everyone a heads up. I know mine will be the rest of the week.
One big Geminid?
This is the time for the Geminid meteor show. It was cloudy and overcast here, so I didn’t go out of my way. However, about 11:30pm Eastern time, I stepped outside to try to reign in Moonlet after a night of regaling with his friend. He was wound up, so I was letting him run around a bit. Whilst outside, I saw a flaming ball shoot across the sky and most likely explode. It was BIG! I mean that in relation to your average Geminid, which is a pin sized shot. This in appearance was at least a glowing marble. It was very exciting.
Just curious if anyone else saw it?
If you did, you’d know what it was.