(meteorobs) meteorobs:Electromagnetic energy produced by a meteoroid

[Richard Kramer]

Estimating crudely in my head ...

a 1 gm particle entering at 30 km / sec would represent about half a 
megajoule of kinetic energy. If I got that right, then a 100 gram 
meteor at 30 km / sec, which I think would be in the range of a mag 
-5 meteor, would represent about 50 megajoule of kinetic energy. If 
that were converted into electromagnetic energy at 0.1% efficiency 
(which seems high to me) over a span of 1 second, it would release a 
burst of about 500 KW of radio emissions integrated across the full 
frequency range. That would certainly be detectable.

Energy would scale linearly with the mass of the particle. Energy 
would scale with the square of the velocity.

Of course, at this late hour on the east coast of the USA, I may have 
estimated badly.

At 09:10 AM 6/22/2016, drobnock wrote:
>This has been discussed before. But I am not fully comprehending.  It is
>known that a meteoroid produces kinetic energy. What value in watts or
>joules for radio frequency electromagnetic energy are produced as a
>meteor enters the atmosphere? From wiki - " For example, scientists at
>NASA suggested that the turbulent ionized wake of a meteor interacts
>with the Earth's magnetic field, generating pulses of radio waves. As
>the trail dissipates, megawatts of electromagnetic power could be
>released,...."  How are/is the kinetic energy translated in to real time
>electromagnetic energy? Is it possible that the electromagnetic energy
>produced is over estimated from kinetic energy? If nothing else any
>paper references?
>
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