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I don't know about estimates of the physical size of the meteorite(s), but
there has been an estimate of the size of the explosion, posted to the list
by George Zay on 9 June:
> I received the following information from Peter Brown yesterday. It is USAF
> surveillance satellite data released in regards to it's detection of various
> recent fireballs. I haven't seen it posted on these folders yet, so I'm
> posting it.
> GeoZay
> [snip]
> On 9 December 1997 at approximately 08:15:55.2 UT, sensors aboard a
> U.S. Department of Defense satellite recorded the bright flash of
> an apparent meteoroid disintegrating in the atmosphere over
> Greenland. The peak radiated intensity recorded on this event
> was 9.5E10 watts/sr (using a 6000K blackbody model for the
> radiation). Correspondingly, the total radiated energy of the
> event was 2.7E11 Joules.
---------------------------------------
Using the conversion factor 1 kiloton = = 4.2E12 Joule, the explosion was
the equivalent of about one-sixtienth of a kiloton or 64 tons of TNT -- not
a Tunguska-class event by any means, but a sizable bang nevertheless.
Despite the size of the explosion, if the object disintegrated explosively
before reaching the ground there may not be any crater to be found; if it
was very friable, the fragments may be very small.
Piper R.W. Hollier
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