[meteorite-list] Carnacas smoke-trail photos

From: Jerry <grf2_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:21:13 -0400
Message-ID: <128847E295DD4CFCBFEEC0F34128887F_at_Notebook>

I too am in complete awe!!!!!!!!
Jerry Flaherty
----- Original Message -----
From: "Darryl Pitt" <darryl at dof3.com>
To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>; "Chris Peterson"
<clp at alumni.caltech.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 9:37 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Carnacas smoke-trail photos


>
>
>
> you know....
>
> what mike farmer has been up to the last few months is nothing short of
> extraordinary.
>
> what is happening before each of us right now is the meteorite lore of
> the future.
>
> as everyone who even glances at this list knows, i'm not blowing smoke
> (trails) here. kudos must also go to his hunting pals, robert ward and
> moritz karl , who i suspect help keep mike in motion.
>
> astonishing. simply astonishing.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Oct 2, 2007, at 8:59 PM, Michael Farmer wrote:
>
>
>> Chris, it is a hell of a crater, at least 13 meters in
>> diameter, more than one meter of uplift, looks
>> identical to Meteor Crater to me, on a much smaller
>> scale.
>> There in fact does seem to be shocked material at the
>> crater, I found only inside and just outside the
>> crater, large pieces of compacted sandstone, yet there
>> is no sandstone there, it seems to have solidified on
>> the impact, everything else is more like soft mud.
>> Large, and I mean larger pieces of sod, weighing at
>> least 40 or 50 kilograms were thrown more than 50-100
>> meters, and smaller dirt clod debris thrown up to 15o
>> meters in all directions. This is a serious impact, I
>> mean you can call it what you want, but with the
>> uplift, the incredible debris field thrown to all
>> sides, the huge size, and volume of the crater itself,
>> certainly leads me to believe that the mass weighed
>> many tons and is obviously in the hole under some
>> meters of fallback debris. The locals report mushroom
>> cloud lingered for more than a hour.
>> As far as more pieces, this meterite came in over lake
>> Titikaka, and if you have never seen this lake, it is
>> HUGE! I would guess that as fragil as the meteorite
>> is, that tons of debris fell off but would most likely
>> have all fallen into the lake, or perhaps some on the
>> mountains just inside of Bolivia. It is not populated
>> there, and I assume from talking to most witnesses,
>> that the large main mass, which was a massive ball of
>> fire much larger and brighter than the Sun, caught
>> everyones attention pretty well, and would be so
>> bright that smaller pieces would be drowned out by the
>> intensity of the main mass. That is what I think
>> happened, surely many more pieces broke off but from
>> where the main mass hit, back down the flightpath is
>> nothing but swamps and high mountains for about 10
>> miles, then 15 miles of lake. Perfect for most
>> material to be lost.
>> Michael Farmer
>> --- Chris Peterson <clp at alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> What remains to be determined is if this is actually
>>> a crater, or just a
>>> big splash. In the first case, some shocked material
>>> should show up, and
>>> I think it's likely that nothing is left in the
>>> bottom. If there really
>>> is a big meteorite at the bottom, then this probably
>>> isn't a crater in
>>> the usual sense (that is, produced by a large energy
>>> release as the
>>> parent body explodes/vaporizes).
>>>
>>> I don't believe I've seen anything credible to
>>> suggest that the water
>>> was actually boiling or steaming. It doesn't take
>>> much energy to make a
>>> hole this size in soft ground- probably around 100
>>> kg TNT equivalent.
>>> And that's not enough to heat up that much water
>>> very much. So I expect
>>> that any apparent bubbling was nothing more than an
>>> effect of ground
>>> water filling in the new hole.
>>>
>>> If the recovered material is shocked fragments, it
>>> may be structurally
>>> quite different from the parent body.
>>>
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> *****************************************
>>> Chris L Peterson
>>> Cloudbait Observatory
>>> http://www.cloudbait.com
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse at charter.net>
>>> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 5:37 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Carnacas smoke-trail
>>> photos
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 2 Oct 2007 15:54:57 -0700 (PDT), you
>>>>
>>>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Is it indeed possible that a mass of say 3-7 tons
>>>>> could cause such intense heat on impact? We think
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> that
>>>
>>>
>>>>> the compression of the soil, in an instant to many
>>>>> meteors deep could also cause intense heating.
>>>>> Every person we interviewed decribed boiling
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> water,
>>>
>>>
>>>>> lots of steam, and horrible sulfer type smell. The
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What I wonder is if maybe the pressure/heat could
>>>>
>>>>
>>> have caused
>>>
>>>
>>>> dissolved gases to
>>>> bubble out from the water? So it might not have
>>>>
>>>>
>>> been at a boiling
>>>
>>>
>>>> temperature,
>>>> but still bubbling/steaming? Too bad we don't
>>>>
>>>>
>>> have samples of the
>>>
>>>
>>>> groundwater
>>>> and soil from the area to see if there is anything
>>>>
>>>>
>>> weird/extensively
>>>
>>>
>>>> poluted
>>>> about it.
>>>>
>>>> Also odd, of course, is a fraglie, porus stone as
>>>>
>>>>
>>> you describe
>>>
>>>
>>>> surviving to the
>>>> ground big enough and fast enough to make the
>>>>
>>>>
>>> crater.
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
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>>> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
>
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Received on Wed 03 Oct 2007 08:21:13 PM PDT