Record meteorite hit Norway (caught on camera too)

Aftenposten (Norway) ^ | 06/09/2006 | Nina Lødemel/Jonathan Tisdall

[mwilli20]

As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima. ...

At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of Troms and the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire taking several seconds to travel across the sky. ...

"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 heard the bang seven minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a solid charge of dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away," Bruvold said. ...

If the meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb. Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare it to the (atomic) bomb," Røed Ødegaard said.

[TASMANIANRED]

Comperable to Hiroshima...little tremor, a shaken house and a blowing curtain......

I don't think so.

[Polyxene]

They just haven't found a way to blame BUSH for it yet!...............

That darn Karl Rove and his weather machine! Now he is piloting asteroids! Or is it global warming that is causing these things to fall from the sky? We must consult our greenie oracle, algore. (sarc)

[CGVet58]

about 70-80 miles.

speed of sound is 340.# m/s, or roughly 1000 ft/sec in dry air.

60 secs = 60K feet, or roughly 11 miles (5280 ft/mi)

7 or so minutes between impact & sound...

[Swordmaker]

7 minutes later, though? That would indicate he was something like 2500 miles away, no?

No. About 86 miles... Speed of sound at 30% humidity and 86ºF is 1086 feet/second.

1086 times 60 seconds times 7 minutes = 456,120 feet... divide by 5280 feet in a mile = ~86.4 miles away from impact.

[Swordmaker]

its norway...we know why

I got my thumb hit with a hammer once... and it got Thor...

[Dark Knight]

I saw a fireball a few weeks ago and it was amazing.

http://www.amsmeteors.org/index.html

This site explains it in english very well. Three other people reported seeing this fireball to the site, so it was nice to have others confirm my sighting.

DK

[Kellis91789]

That was my first thought, but "Rods of God" only makes financial sense if you have cheap access to space. We don't have that yet. The projectiles are dirt cheap, but getting them into space is too expensive to make it worthwhile.

[The_Reader_David]

Light travels 186,000 miles/sec, sound about 750 miles/hour. I guess you never learned to find out how far away a lightning stroke was by counting seconds. He was about 88 miles away. That's how he heard it 7 minutes later.

[thinking]

The speed of sound is around a 1000 feet per sec, 7 minutes is 420 seconds and 420 secs x 1000 feet/sec = 420000 feet away from the observer, or 420000 feet/5280 feet/mile=79.5 miles distant from the farmer...a BIG sound for sure....

[Rakkasan1]

If the meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb.

Truman's fault!

[El Gato]

you guys are mis-reading your word problem. The flash and smoke he sees are in the sky, the meteor hasn't hit yet. He goes about what he is doing, and hears the boom 7 minutes later. If the flash he saw was the meteor hitting the ground you could measure the speed of sound, but he sees it in the air, and it hits an undetermined time later. Thats the way I read it...

But, the meteor is going much faster than the speed of sound. The time between his seeing it, and it crossing the distance from where he saw it to where it impacted would be short compared to the time for the sound to get back to him. But the sound he heard may not have been the impact, or there may not have been an impact, even though the story says there was.

[El Gato]

If a big meteor struck the earth with that much energy there would be devastation like the one which hit Syberia at the turn of the last century.

That one didn't leave a crater. It was an air burst, but apparently one not all that high up.

If this one was still intact when it hit that mountain, there should be crater. It was only earlier this week, it's about as far north as you can be and still be in Europe, and is not a real densely populated area. Might take a while to get up there, even with an aircraft, to look for the crater.

[null and void]

7 minutes later, though? That would indicate he was something like 2500 miles away, no?

More like 85 miles.

[null and void]

Whoops never mind... hours, minutes, what's the difference? =)

About 335 miles, in this case...

[mwilli20]

... sound about 750 miles/hour

I know, I know, I alerady apologized at post 23, the pressure of being first to post got to me ;-)

[DBrow]

Well, I could calculate the increase in atmospheric enthalpy due to meteoric energy transfer to the atmosphere per decade if you'd like. I'll send you my grant application on Monday.

The answer is likely to be millions of ergs- the problem is hugh!

[timer]

LOL For halloween/new year's/etc party favors you could make up algore dunce hats : conical w/elastic chin straps, painted on comets, meteors, stars(like the ancient chaldean astrologer hats that have come to symbolize a dunce)with "algore ozone and meteorite protection hat". Pass them out to the mentally challenged liberals at the party.

[cicero106]

Hey, if you guys would just use the metric system, this would have been much easier.

[thinking]

metric? metric?, isn't that some European ploy to subvert our society...feet it is...lol

[tomjohn77]

I guess they like the French so much that they have to stick to how the French king measured distance.