Buttercup: Westley, what about the M.O.U.S.es?
Westley: Meteorites of unusual size? I don't think they exist.
Posted on 12/18/2004 6:32:21 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
Several loud blasts were heard in the Indonesian capital Jakarta and two other towns nearby early on Sunday, local Metro TV reported.
It reported residents heard the blasts around 7.30 a.m. (0030 GMT). Police were not immediately available to comment. Western governments have warned of possible terror attacks in Indonesia over the Christmas and New Year period.
Buttercup: Westley, what about the M.O.U.S.es?
Westley: Meteorites of unusual size? I don't think they exist.
On October 30, 1938 CBS Radio was broadcasting the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra live from the Meridian Room at the Park Plaza in New York City. Suddenly a reporter from Intercontinental Radio News interrupted the broadcast to deliver an important announcement. Astronomers had just detected enormous blue flames shooting up from the surface of Mars.
So.... this is Jakarta. And we came here why?
Orson Welles, is that you?
Niiiice!
Read the rest here:
http://members.aol.com/jeff1070/script.html
"Oh, I get it! I get jokes!"
LOL...Mars attacks....
Did Meteor have markings similar to those found on a North Korean ICBM?
ELF in Indonesia? Folks, you heard it here first!
LOL....did you also hear ALLAH met with Karl Rove...and well it too presented itself to become a PERECT ROVIAN STORM!!!!
Maybe all the idiot jihadis will rush over, fall to their knees (and foreheads) and start worshipping it five times a day...
Dozens of people telephoned Jakarta's ElShinta radio to describe an object, white in appearance, crossing the sky west of Jakarta and a violent noise followed by what they said sounded like an echo.
The explosion could be heard in Tangerang, just west of Jakarta, the southern suburb of Depok and as far away as Bogor, some 60 kilometers (35 miles) south of the capital.
"It is difficult to say what it was because there were no clear timings between the sighting and the blast, but from what the various accounts said, it is very likely to have been a falling meteor," said astronomer Muji Raharto.
Hours after the sightings were reported at around 7:30 am (0030 GMT) it was still unclear what the object was or where it exploded.
Police said they had no reports of any fallen objects and said they were still investigating the origin of the explosion.
"We have called all sub-districts and they all say they are not aware" of a falling meteor in their area, a female officer on duty at the Tangerang district police, First Inspector Kamtini told AFP.
Raharto said later that if witnesses' accounts were correct, it could have been a ball of gas some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) in diameter enveloping a much smaller solid core.
The blast, he said, could have come from the core exploding as it underwent a rapid temperature rise due to friction.
"The fallout would have been small pieces, that could easily go unnoticed in unpopulated areas," he said, explaining the absence so far of any evidence of a large impact.
Air force spokesman First Air Marshal Sagom Tambun said the air force was not monitoring falling objects such as meteors.
"Our radars are only for detecting and monitoring horizontal moving objects in the sky, and only then are we interested if the object suddenly moves on the vertical," Tambun said, adding he had had no reports of any observation of a falling object in the sky so far.
Indonesia's security forces have been on alert after warnings from western governments that Islamic militants blamed for a series of deadly bombings in the country were planning an imminent attack in the run-up to Christmas.
Meanwhile, meteorologists in both Jakarta and Tangerang said there had been no seismic irregularities registered in the areas. Officials at Jakarta's international airport said their radars were incapable of picking up meteors.
Raharto, from the Boscha astronomical observatory in Bandung, West Java, told AFP that only specialised radars could detect falling space debris. He said the country's only operational specialised radar was in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, too far from the sighting sites.
Ping to post # 55.
Welcome your comments/observations.
Jakarta blast follows falling object sightings
Posted by Phsstpok to Strategerist; TNdandelion
On News/Activism 12/18/2004 10:45:00 PM CST · 16 of 16
It is clearly not proven, but not unreasonable to assume that this is a larger bit of debris from the passage of 3200 Phaeton, the asteroid credited as the source of the Geminid meteor shower that we've just been going through (peak was around 12/14).
Most meteor showers are thought to occur when the Earth passes through the debris trail left behind in a comet's orbit. 3200 Phaeton has been identified as the source in this case, but it has also been classified as an asteroid, not a comet. It is theorized that it used to be a comet and has just blown off all of it's volatiles, leaving only a rocky core. An alternative is that it is a normal rocky asteroid and the debris trail is the result of a collision with some other object.
In either case, it's likely that if this was an extra-planetary object crashing into the atmosphere and exploding that it was a bigger chunk of 3200 Phaeton's debris trail.
Comet Encke's debris trail, which we experience as the Beta Taurid meteor shower, is thought to be the source of the object that created the Tunguska blast in the early 1900s. Some pretty good work was done on the results of the explosion and calculating the path of the object that would have caused the observed results. The conclusion matches up with the direction of the Beta Taurid debris stream. At that point the debris stream is crossing Earth's orbit and "coming out of the sun." This resulted in an early morning... "orbital intercept," is about the only thing I can think of to call it. The object came screaming in out of the sunrise traveling across the Siberian sky until it exploded, they figure about 6 miles up. The explosion was heard for thousands of square miles and registered on seismographs thousands of miles away.
Depending on what it was made of, size estimates vary but average around 50 to 60 meters. Given the relative results (no observed damage from the event in Indonesia) the object this week was likely about the size of a lounge chair. Basketball size objects average one per month. 50 meter objects average one per 100 years. A barco lounger sized object therefore probably hits a couple of times per year.
Or it could be something else completely. I've heard that leaves have been canceled for our troops in Asia on short notice. Maybe it's related to some "deep impact" event and this is an early warning impact. Or, Kim Jung Il may be starting to take pot shots. Who knows?
I love the topic, though. Fire up the THEL and get the 747 flying laser airborne, fellas. There's incoming from somewhere out there!
SPACE.COM:
Small Asteroid Passes Between Satellites and Earth
Astronomers spotted an asteroid this week after it had flown past Earth on a course that took it so close to the planet it was below the orbits of some satellites.
The space rock was relatively small, however, and would not have posed any danger had it plunged into the atmosphere.
The object, named 2004 YD5, was about 16 feet (5 meters) wide, though that's a rough estimate based on its distance and assumed reflectivity. Had it entered the atmosphere, it would have exploded high up, experts figure.
Satellite territory
The asteroid passed just under the orbits of geostationary satellites, which at 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) altitude are the highest manmade objects circling Earth. Most other satellites, along with the International Space Station, circle the planet at just a few hundred miles up.
2004 YD5 is the second closest pass of an asteroid ever observed by telescope, according to the Asteroid/Comet Connection, a web site that monitors space rock discoveries. The closest involved a rock that flew by last March and was not announced until August.
2004 YD5 was discovered Tuesday, Dec. 21 by Stan Pope, who volunteers his time to examine images provided by the FMO (Fast Moving Object) project, an online program run by the University of Arizona's Spacewatch Project. After the initial detection, other observers noted the object's position during the day and its path was then calculated back. Closest approach occurred on Dec. 19.
The rock approached Earth from near the Sun and so would have been nearly impossible to detect prior to close passage. It soared over Antarctica -- underneath the planet, Washington State University researcher Pasquale Tricarico told the Asteroid/Comet Connection.
(Extract, click title for article)
We may have been in a bit of a shooting gallery last week. I wonder how many more objects either scooted by or burned up over uninhabited areas or ocean? Hope it's over.
Yikes!
There's a fair amount of apocalyptic literature on the web making connections between seismic activity and otherwise unexplained booms. Not real convincing, but intriguing.
On the other hand, I remember several years ago some very convincing (and well received professionally) research speculating that "ball lightening" was a real phenomenon that could be associated with a peizo-electric effect when large pressures build up before an earthquake. Could the boom be a similar effect, one that wouldn't show up on a seismograph but could produce the large sound? I can think of several mechanisms, but no way to test it.
Bottom line, however, stuff is impacting the rotary impeller device.
I have this theory about reality. There are times of more stuff and times of less stuff. In times of more stuff, not only do violent natural phenomenon occur more frequently and extremely, but human behavior also gets more intense. It's like there's a "volume control" on life and it just got turned up to eleven (it's one more, it's louder).
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