[meteorite-list] Nakhla and the dead mutt!

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:09 2004
Message-ID: <200208091843.LAA01281_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

>Hello List, I have a question! There is a lot of arguing about
>this dog thing! If there is any validity at all to Ron Baalke's
>theory, there could be one big strewn field between El Nakhla and
>Denshal.

Ah, someone who sees the true light. I've already pointed
out on several occassions on the possibility of a large
Nakhla strewn field. If a dog was hit in Denshal,
33 km from El Nakhla, then that would indicate a large
strewnfield between the two. As far as I know, Hume nor anyone else
knowledgable of meteorites have looked for meteorites in Denshal
or anywhere between El Nakhla and Denshal. Hume focused his
meteorite collecting only within the confines of El Nakhla.
Had Hume searched for meteorites outside the Nakhla district, he would
have undoubtedly found more meteorites, particularly along the
flight path axis. That conclusion is based soley on the strewnfield
data that Hume had collected. There is physical evidence that
indicates the Nakhla strewnfield was indeed large.

Hume did carefully document where each meteorite fragment in El Nakhla were
found. He also documented the direction of the meteorite fall, and noted
that the farthest distance between the fragments was 4.5 km.

As a sidenote, the Nakhla district is also 4.5 km long.
Hume focused his search on meteorites found by the local inhabitants,
and there is no record of him or any of his colleagues canvassing
the area outside of El Nakhla.

Now comes the real interesting part.
As you know, a strewn field is an ellipse with its long axis
along the direction of flight. The 4.5 km distance that Hume documented
is not along the flight of path, but surprisingly, is instead perpendicular
to the flight path. This indicates that Hume had documented
just a small cross section of the true strewnfield. In other words, the
Nakhla strewnfield ellipse is at least 4.5 km WIDE, and probably wider,
as Hume did not search outside of El Nakhla. More importantly, the strewnfield's
long axis along its flight path would be consideraly longer than its
4.5 km width. The true Nakhla strewnfield would extend out in both directions
along the flight path, into the nearby lake in one
direction, and out towards Denshal in the other direction. The locations
of the endpoints of the strewnfield are not known, but there
are indications that the strewnfield extends out from El Nakhla to Denshal.
Denshal falls along the flight path 33 km downstream from El Nakhla.
The were reports that people witnessed the Nakhla
meteorite fall in Denshal, including the report
of a meteorite hitting a dog in Denshal. A meteorite
fragment was produced from Denshal, which is now lost,
but its description matched that of the Nakhla meteorite.

The dog story itself of itself is of
little relevance, other than it supports that the Nakhla strewnfield
is much larger than originally thought.

Ron Baalke
Received on Fri 09 Aug 2002 02:43:39 PM PDT