[meteorite-list] Meteorite Crashes Through Thailand House Roof

From: Chris Peterson <clp_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:40:52 -0600
Message-ID: <5772E0D4.5050305_at_alumni.caltech.edu>

There's really no way for such a stone to be heated significantly by the
energy dissipated when crashing through a roof.

In all likelihood, the reason that observed falls are reported as hot is
because people expect hot, and confuse hot with cold. I don't think the
incidence of reports of heat is significantly higher for hammers than
for other falls.

FWIW, when you pull a nail the mass of the nail is very small, it has a
high surface area compared with its volume, it's thermally conductive,
the extraction is relatively slow, and the friction is very high.
Contrast that with a meteorite: much smaller surface area compared with
volume, low thermal conductivity, very high speed of impact, and very
little friction (with most of the surface never even contacting the roof).

Chris

*******************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On 6/28/2016 2:29 PM, Peter Scherff via Meteorite-list wrote:
> Hi Tom,
>
> Yes, I think so. There are too many reports of meteorites being hot to the
> touch. Those reports are almost always about meteorites that have punched
> through something (building, vehicle or ground). I trust this mass of
> anecdotal evidence. But we won't know for sure until some starts shooting
> rocks through buildings for their doctoral thesis.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Peter
Received on Tue 28 Jun 2016 04:40:52 PM PDT