June 09, 2006
Wow...
My son sent me this link:
Record meteorite hit Norway
As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima...
....Farmer Peter Bruvold was out on his farm in Lyngseidet with a camera because his mare Virika was about to foal for the first time.
"I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a tail of smoke," Bruvold told Aftenposten.no. He photographed the object and then continued to tend to his animals when he heard an enormous crash.....
I must assume that our government is aware that a large meteoritic impact would have an appearance very similar to the explosion of a nuclear bomb...blinding flash, mushroom cloud ascending into the Stratosphere, deadly X-Rays, etc. Don't push the Button right away, George...
Posted by John Weidner at June 9, 2006 10:34 AMMy husband has a metorite. He found it in his backyard. It's a little smaller than palm size and quite soothing to hold (all of those smooth edges, and a hefty weight.)
Posted by: B. Durbin at June 9, 2006 10:56 AMI'm impressed.
I've heard that they find lots of them in Antarctica, where they are preserved in the ice until it happens to melt and reveal them...
Posted by: John Weidner at June 9, 2006 10:05 PM"I must assume that our government is aware that a large meteoritic impact would have an appearance very similar to the explosion of a nuclear bomb...blinding flash, mushroom cloud ascending into the Stratosphere, deadly X-Rays, etc."
Well, you joke but there is that fascinating "double flash" incident that occured off the South Africa coast in 1979. Was it a meteorite or an atomic bomb?
Posted by: Chicago Station at June 10, 2006 10:00 AMNo joke. But I had forgotten about the South Africa incident. And that's a fascinating article, thanks.
Posted by: John Weidner at June 10, 2006 10:05 AMYeah, a meteor impact big enough to send a mushroom cloud into the stratosphere would be a Hiroshima-sized event, but the key difference between a kinetic-energy event and a nuclear event is the matter of radioactivity-- I can't imagine how a meteor impact could possibly be energetic enough to produce a burst of X-rays, let alone produce some sort of transmutation resulting in radioactive material.
My two cents' worth....
Posted by: Hale Adams at June 11, 2006 08:04 PMX-Rays I just read somewhere--I don't know enough to back that up. Transmutation certainly not.
Posted by: John Weidner at June 11, 2006 10:30 PM
