The site also provides a 220+ page free ebook on the hypothesis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ0wB72TTg0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Qp24UDGjw

I don’t know if they watch them on the continent.

Nickel has a bright spectral line at 5,476.91 angstroms and iron has a bright spectral line at 5,167.487 angstroms. Both of those wavelengths are in the green part of the spectrum so perhaps it is the iron-nickel composition that is causing the green glow of certain meteors.

I was going to post the same conclusion after doing some research, too.

I’m wondering if a spectrograph has ever been used on one of these falling bolides. Probably not but that would certainly clinch it if you see emission at these specific wavelengths.

“The Peekskill meteorite broke up over the United States on October 9, 1992, an event witnessed by thousands across the East Coast. The meteorite broke up over Kentucky and landed on a parked car in Peekskill, New York. Major cities like Pittsburgh witnessed the bright meteorite. The meteorite traveled northeast and had a pronounced greenish color. The meteorite has been captured on 16 different videos and remains as one of the most famous meteorite sightings.”

Here’s a good video of it:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Peekskill+metorite&emb=0&aq=f#

That sucker is DEFINITELY green. I guess I’m not crazy after all. Green meteors really do exist. Apparently the Peekskill meteor actually impacted someone’s car and thus totally that. I hope his insurance paid for the damage. Anyway, enjoy!

Still not clear what the cause of the green color is. Is it the nickel in the meteorite or the atomic oxygen surrounding it as it passes through the atmosphere. BA, any thoughts on that one? Yeah, right, the BA has moved on about a week ago on this post.

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http://www.oregonstarparty.org/spacedebris.htm

There were many sightings of the OSP Bolide that evening, gasping plenty of “oohs and ahs”. The following observations were made: “It was like the Sky was falling at OSP.” “It was a green flame, the size of a nickel at arms length.”

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A shortened report by John Gillis of Rose City Astronomers is as follows: “I saw it at OSP, and it was amazing. It was not a point or a disk, but it was definitely elongated and I clearly saw it tumbling. It was a bright green color and left a smoke trail.” Paul Schmidt of RCA commented jokingly about the OPHI/SATT bolide on the night of the 10th, “It looked like a flaming potato.”

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Richard Pugh, meteorological scientist, had three sightings of bolides. He commented: “The bright green color was common due to temperature and elemental content, indicating either a meteoritical nickel- iron or space debris. A steep descent angle usually was associated with meteorites.”

Wow, I downloaded the PDF. It’s chock full of equations. It will take me some time to go through all that and understand it. Thanks so much. I particularly like the air blast calculations. My only gripe is there are still not tsunami calculations for ocean strikes even though it does compute the size of the crater at the bottom of the ocean. For asteroids in the range 500 m – 2,000 m it is probably the tsunami that will kill the most number of humans. Still, it’s an impressive program. Thanks again.

I’ve been to Meteor Crater in Arizona in the 1980′s (previously called the Barringer crater). I’ve also been to Sedan crater in the Nevada Test Site which was made by a nuclear weapon in 1962. Meteor Crater is much, much bigger which puts the puny powers of Homo sapiens into perspective.

Back in 1992 I wanted to go to the Wolf Creek Meteor crater in Western Australia but it was the rainy season (I think November to February if I remember correctly) and all the roads were washed out and private planes weren’t flying at the time. So I missed out on that one. I hear it’s very similar to Meteor Crater in Arizona but it’s still on my to-do list if I ever get back down under.

Lots of tumbleweeds up the top end… and goats. Millions of goats. Who new?

All three of the above programs appear to give slightly different results! Ah, this is all theoretical; the only way to determine which program is the most accurate would be to do an actual test experiment by manoeuvring an actual asteroid in space to smash into the Moon. That would be fun!

No, I said that I found the web-site, not ‘founded’ it personally. It was written and created by Dr. Douglas P. Hamilton and students at the University of Maryland, with support from NASA and NSF. His name is at the bottom of the page on that web-site, and there is a link — “Astronomy Workshop” — just above his name which leads to his main web-site page; at the bottom of that page, there is another link on his name which leads to his “Home Page” with further links to his Research Interests, Scientific Publications, CV, etc.

Tom Marking: “What equations are you or they using for that?”

I would like to know, too! Dr. Hamilton has an e-mail address at the top of his CV, which you can download as a PDF file. Maybe the both of us can badger him for the equations!

Anyway, a 4 km rocky asteroid impacting at 20 km/sec has an energy of 4 Teratons and magnitude 10.0 on the Richter scale according to your URL. According to Wikipedia a magnitude 10.0 earthquake releases 1 Teraton of energy. So that’s one fourth the computed value. The actual magnitude should be 10.4 on the Richter scale. That’s not a terrible adjustment, much better than I thought at first, but still off by quite a bit.

Did you write that web site yourself? I’m particularly interested in the cratering sizes. What equations are you or they using for that? It seems that the crater diameter is going in proportion to the cube root of the kinetic energy or in proportion to the diameter of the asteroid. Thus, a 1.0 km wide rocky asteroid leaves a crater 12.5 km in diameter but a 3.0 km wide rocky asteroid leaves a crater 37.1 km in diameter (~3 times wider) for collision velocity = 20 km/sec.

However, the crater depth only increased from 0.6 km to 0.9 km. It seems to increase by a steady 0.3 km for every increase in diameter by a factor of 3. Not sure why it’s not scaling the same way the crater diameter is.

Also, I’m not sure if those earthquake magnitudes are correct. They seem like awfully small numbers to me for very large impacts. Thus, a 3.0 km wide asteroid impact has an energy equivalent to 9.8 on the Richter scale, slightly greater than the largest natural earthquake in history. Just a gut feeling tells me it should be much larger, but I would have to do more research to confirm that.

Finally, I believe there must be some bugs in that URL as well. A 10.0 km wide rocky asteroid impacting on land at 20 km/sec leaves a crater 122 km wide and 1.2 km deep. The same asteroid impacting in the ocean leaves a temporary crater 122 km wide and 36.7 km deep. Since the deepest point in the ocean (i.e., the Challenger Deep) has a depth of 11 km this means the asteroid would dig a hole at least 25.7 km into the earth’s crust if it lands over the ocean whereas it will dig a hole only 1.2 km deep if it lands over the land. That makes no sense at all and MUST be a bug. The ocean should cushion its impact so that the depth of the crater at the bottom of the ocean should be less than 1.2 km deep. Other than that it seems like a fun program.

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