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Re: (meteorobs) Flt 800
There was an active thread about the possibility of a meteorite impact
being involved in the crash of Flight 800 this past year, Lloyd.
You can always refer back to the (huge) Web archive at:
http://www.tiacdot net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/maillist.html
for the original postings. But the gist of this thread was that there were
many questions which needed answering before a meteorite could be considered!
First of all, any soon-to-be-meteorite which would be encountered at the
low altitude of Flight 800 would already have lost its large celestial
velocity due to friction with Earth's atmosphere. The question arose: how
much damage could a "normal-sized" meteorite really cause, if it was
encountered at merely terminal velocity by a commercial jet aircraft?
And if the object really were large enough to destroy a plane just in
freefall, then wouldn't the fireball from it be so bright as to be easily
visible up and down the Northeast coast of the US, even in daylight? Why
were no reports received at the time from other observers far from Long
Island?
Third, many of the reports seemed to locate the skyflash in the same area
of the sky as the "observed" explosion: but again the visible trail of such
a fireball would most likely have been observed in areas of the sky far
removed from the explosion of Flight 800 some minutes later. The exact
angular distance between the events would be determined by the meteor's
true trajectory through the atmosphere, and the geographical position of
EACH observer.
Fourth, eyewitness descriptions naively described the visible meteor as
being IMMEDIATELY prior to the visible crash: but a meteorite-forming
meteor goes through at least a few minutes of "dark fall" in between the
time it's ionization trail is visible and the time it impacts earth (or a
nearby plane). No such delay was noted by ground observers.
[Note however the sonic boom from such a meteor COULD have appeared to
immediately precede (or even follow) a visible impact, since the travel
time of the sound COULD end up being comparable with the dark-fall time of
the meteor, depending on geometries...]
Did I miss anything in this summary, folks?
Clear skies,
Lew