[meteorite-list] Re: New Concord Meteorite, Hot and Cold Again

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Jul 23 14:54:04 2005
Message-ID: <42E29227.599BB425_at_bhil.com>

Hi, Everybody!

    Ah, the old meteorite hot or cold debate, again.

    How good are human witnesses? Not very. We know that.

    Specifically, how good are they at making specific qualitative
observations? Are their perceptions unbiased by their notions about the
object observed?

    The answer to that is no.

    My example is lightning. If I ask you "What color is lightning?" I will
get a variety of answers based on your perceptions of lightning AND your
knowledge of it. Most will say "white." Many will add to it, "blue-white."
There will be few others, about 5%, the most naive and uneducated observers,
who will add a tinge of red, orange, yellow, usually with an "-ish" tacked
on the end.

    The actual color of lightning is white, of course, since the central
core plasma of a bolt is at a temperature between a minimum of 20,000 and
usually closer to 30,000 degrees Kelvin.

    Many years ago (long before Google), I did an exhaustive search (months)
of all the historic literature of the world, every language, every culture
(available in translation) for descriptions of the color of lightning.
English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, etc., medieval and
modern up to 1800 AD. The Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, Mesopotamian, Hindu,
Chinese, everybody! (I just want to impress you with the thoroughness of the
search.)

    I was able to find 974 descriptions of lightning color, some from every
time period and literature searched. I probably could have found thousands,
but since the results were conclusive, I quit the increasingly difficult
task. Absolutely, without any doubt, before the year 1800 AD, all lightning
on the planet Earth was RED in color, or red-orange, or "bloody" or other
descriptive terms clearly derived from the color red.

    Obviously, some major change in the physical character of electricity or
the nature of the planet's atmosphere had occurred, hadn't it? Between 1790
and 1900, lightning changed color from RED to WHITE or blue-white. There's
no doubt about it.

    What happened? Well, before 1800 AD, everybody "knew" that lightning was
"fire." By 1900 AD, everybody "knew" that lightning was "electricity."
That's all. Before 1800 AD, there was no electricity, so how could we know
waht color lightning was? Fire is red; electricity is white or blue-white in
discharge. Ah, now we know!

    Human perception is not "influenced" by human conception or
pre-convictions, it is totally OVERWHELMED by it. Human beings only see what
they BELIEVE they are seeing. They pay no attention at all to what is
actually there or to the data presented to their senses, correcting
"obvious" errors on the fly before the perception even reaches
consciousness.

    Meteorites? Flamin' Fireballs, Batman! Burning, blinding, fiery bolides!
Yada yada. Of course, meteorites are hot! It's surprising they're not
molten, like the standard Hollywood B-movie of the 1950's, with its glowing
craters. John Carradine as The Professor says gravely and deep-voiced,
"We'll have to wait until the meteorite cools." It's OBVIOUS that meteorites
are hot, so they are...

    Sarcasm aside, it's to be expected that there would be many reports of
hot or at least warm meteorites. Warm is probably a compromise made between
the "knowledge" that they are hot and the strange fact that you can't feel
any heat!

    UFO's?


Sterling K. Webb
--------------------------------------------
    PS: Out of 974 references to lightning color, the was ONE reference to
"blue lightnings," in the eighth century early Slavic epic poem, The Song Of
Igor's Campaign, the oldest known piece of literature in anything resembling
the Russian language, at the furthest Eastern reach of European peoples at
the time. One good observer in millennia.
--------------------------------------------


AL Mitterling wrote:

> Hi Mark and list,
>
> I find the statement below hard to believe, because of the time to reach
> the specimen and it being in moist soil. Perhaps the sun was shinning
> (according to Mark's other posts it was partly cloudy) and it had a chance
> to heat the black crust before the men reached it. Best!
>
> --AL
>
Received on Sat 23 Jul 2005 02:53:27 PM PDT