[meteorite-list] Re: New Naklha Dog Evidence

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:55:52 2004
Message-ID: <200201262032.MAA28061_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

> One of the accounts quoted somewhere in this long thread says the dog was "turned to ashes in an
> instant." It seems to me that the more likely result of an hypersonic impact on a dog would be a wide
> and uniform distribution of dogburger! I suspect that the observation of "ashes" was created by a
> witness to match his interpretation of the event as "fire from Heaven."


Any object hitting the ground at hypervelocity speed would have so much
energy, it would create a crater. Meteorites are slowed down considerably
going through the Earth's atmospher. I really would not expect though that
the Nakhla meteorite fragments to hit at such high speeds, particularly
when you consider the meteorite entered the atmosphere at a very
steep angle (30 degrees to the horizontal), and would have to travel
through more of the atmosphere before reaching the ground.

The other intriguing prospect, is that in a typical strewnfield, the
size of the meteorite fragements are larger downstream. So, if the
Nakhla strewnfield does extend to Denshal, then you would expect the
meteorite fragments at Denshal to be larger than then ones at El Nakhla.
Incidently, the largest fragment found at El Nakhla was 1.8 kg. There were
no details on the size of the fragments observed to fall in Denshal.
But a larger fragment would do more damage if it hits anything.

Ron Baalke
Received on Sat 26 Jan 2002 03:32:10 PM PST