A big hole (1.5 meters across) appeared in a frozen pond in Canada last Friday. The ice is half a meter thick, so whatever did it packed a heckuva punch.
Was it a meteorite?
Maybe. Hard to say. No one saw or heard anything (of course, it was 80 bazillion degrees below 0 Friday night there)*, and I’m thinking it would have to have been a fair-sized chunk of iron to make that big a hole. The size of the hole indicates a big meteorite if it was one, so it might have still been hot when it hit (smaller ones slow down a lot and cool off before impact).
Of course, other things fall from the sky. Something from an airplane? Kids screwing around (dropping anvils in the middle of ponds…? Maybe not)? I hope they search the pond after it thaws, because I’m curious to know what this thing is. And if it is a meteorite, it’s worth a fortune.
*Update: Commenter Jamie says in fact lots of people did hear and feel something that night. I’m not seeing anything searching Google news though. If that story is right, then it’s definitely worth looking for the object that punched the hole.
Tip of the Whipple Shield to Fark.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:11 pm
But I thought the bottom had fallen out of the meteorite market?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I thought meteorites were very cold after 10^6s of years in space and a few seconds of being flash cooked through the atmosphere didn’t make a lot of difference overall?
Does it depend on the surface area:volume ratio of the meteorite?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I tend to agree with Dave Morton that it would be cold. The question is how big a chunk of iron would it take to punch a 1.5 meter hole in 0.5 meter thick ice. How much would rebounding water enlarge the initial hole?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
It’s either very localized global warming, in which this episode caused the sea to rise 10^(-7) mm, and every living thing on Earth will now suffer for it, or …
…did anyone take a look at the rim of the hole to see if resembled Jesus?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Yea dave, the meteorite might’ve been cold, but it still goes SMACK when it lands. Packs a big punch.
Interesting but I wonder, wouldn’t it have cracked more ice? It should be unsafe to be on that pond right now, and yet look at that guy.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Man, that’s a lot of “M”s.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Holes in frozen ponds are not that uncommon they usually appear after the sound of a badly tuned engine all of a sudden stops, but that ice is thick so probably was not a person on a ski-doo falling through.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I’m dive certified, you rent the equipment for a cold water dive, and I’ll go get it…
January 21st, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Doesn’t sound convincing to me…
Holes on ice can form without extraterrestrial help. Rotting organic material in a lake bottom produces methane. Methane, bubbles up and causes welling up of warmer water (+4°C = ~40°F¹). This warmer water is capable of melting ice, especially in spring when air temperatures are rising.
What’s more, the methane bubbling can be so violent that some mud and shattered ice can splash on the ice making the hole really convincing for a meteorite hunter.
If there is water on the ice, it may flow in the hole carving long tentacle-like grooves on the ice. Such grooves make the hole to look like a neuron with synapses.
The image provided is so tiny that it is hard to see anything, but it does not look unlike a hole produced by this mechanism.
If the lake has very little organic material (i.e. mud) this mechanism is not likely. On the other hand, sub-lake springs can also cause similar holes.
¹) At +4°C water is heaviest, so the water near the bottoms of frozen lakes typically have this temperature.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Um, I wrote that before actually reading the article. For me, it looks like case closed.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
murff: i was thinking the same thing, I just need a drysuit.
My guess is, if it was a meteorite, it’s a basketball sized iron meteorite, and it hit the ice at terminal velocity.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:11 pm
It might’ve been an anomalously large packet of neutrinos arriving from the other side of Earth.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
It’s Cloverfield!
January 21st, 2008 at 1:21 pm
If you are talking about the one in Spruce Grove Alberta then from the radio reports I have been hearing, it sounds like alot of people not only saw but felt it hit. Apparently people saw a fireball streaming through the sky and then felt shaking when it hit for approx. 10 seconds. Then this hole in the pond at the golf course was found.
I live about a half an hour drive from there, its been all over the news.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:24 pm
The temperature of the meteor (assuming it was one) as it minded its own business out in space wouldn’t necessarily have been cold. As it approached its rendezvous with Earth, it was of course at about the same distance from the Sun as is Earth. Earth is a big rock in space, but it’s not in a deep freeze all the time.
And the lesson here is that the temperature of space is that of the radiation flowing through it. If an object finds itself way out halfway between here & Alpha Centauri, then the dominant heat source will be the background radiation, at a temperature of only a bit less than 3K. That’s colder than a witch’s…
But here, close to the Sun, there’s a great deal more heat flowing through space. The meteor would’ve been comfortably warm even before entering the atmosphere.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
http://www.fftimes.com/National/Meteorite-believed-cause-of-giant-hole/21-Jan-2008
here is a link to a story I found.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Anyway It may not have been lots of people but some anyway.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:47 pm
So there was a meteor, causing sonic booms. Nobody actually saw it falling down? Because people often mistake meteors falling nearby, even though the meteor can actually be hundreds of kilometers away.
January 21st, 2008 at 4:55 pm
A hole in the ice on a pond, in the middle of a golf course? Yeah, no other possible explanation than a meteorite.
Say, has anyone seen the groundskeeper lately…?
January 21st, 2008 at 4:59 pm
The article said the hole was octopus-shaped. How do we know it didn’t originate from below. Where’s PZ Myers when you need him?
January 21st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Phil Plait, January 18:
“…it’s like trying to dig a hole in water”
Apparently that is so easy that even a meteorite can do it.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I find that very suspicious. If indeed it was a meteorite that was felt – as in people felt a seismic shckwave – wouldn’t the lake now be empty?! I mean really think about the energy involved in punching a hole in the ice and then striking the bottom of the lake with enough force for peole to feel the impact!
January 21st, 2008 at 6:59 pm
I have the exact same question. If the meteorite that landed in Thailand was mistakenly depicted as having been warm, then why would this one have been hot? Obviously, mass would be the difference but wouldn’t mass only become a factor for a much larger space effluvia?
As always, I for one welcome our new master.
Phil, alliteration much appreciated.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I’ve heard that Richard Hoagland is suggesting that it’s a big booger (sp?) that the Face on Mars hocked out. He forgot to get his flu shot this year and has a bad case of it.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I just read a story on Google News Canada about it. For some strange reason it’s under the sports section. A man did see a fireball 2 days before this was discovered driving from St. Albert to Edmonton. This could be the object that crashed into the pond on the Gold Course. (This course is only a few miles from where I used to live). They are reporting that it wouldn’t be worth the expense of sending divers down to look for it because the water reacts with the minerals in the rock, making it useless for scientific study.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:06 pm
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080121.whole0121/BNStory/National/home
Here’s the link
January 21st, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Oscar Meyer thin-sliced Chondrite Loaf, the meteor choice for lunch.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:07 pm
I live in Edmonton right beside Spruce Grove, none of the local news papers, radio or TV picked it up. I would look for a Skidoo in the hole before a meteor, it’s common for night skidooer’s to vandalize golf courses. The “Markings” could simply be semi melted skidoo tracks.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:13 am
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:22 am
If the hole resembles the Virgin Mother then I’ll go after it. I’ve got my own scuba gear, don’t need the freebie
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:51 am
Francis Wayland Thurston posts:
[[Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!]]
Well, if Cthulhu acts now, I can set him up with a cable and high-speed internet and internet phone service for only $99.00 a month! Additional channels are extra.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
The size and shape of the hole is characteristic of melting caused by spring water rising from the pond bottom. Spring water, coming from meters under the surface, typically has the average annual local temperature. It rises in a plume through the colder, denser pond water and melts the ice from below. The fresh snow, apparent in the photo, insulates the ice and aids melting. Just about any frozen shallow pond or lake will have some of these at least sometimes during the winter.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Phil said: “I’m thinking it would have to have been a fair-sized chunk of iron to make that big a hole.”
As it was on a golf course, maybe it was a 5-iron, no…?
–
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Skiing over it with a magnetometer should find anything with iron it in- including golf clubs.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Hey maybe it’s the messenger spacecraft! After all Wikipedia said that messenger was around Canada.