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(meteorobs) Fwd Re: Halley's Comet Returns In Bits And Pieces
[Forwarded without permission. Author is not a member of the 'meteorobs'
list, so if you reply be sure to manually place 'maury@obs-azur.fr' in
the 'Cc:' line of your response. Clear skies! -Lew Gramer]
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 02:32:33 +0100
From: Alain Maury <maury@obs-azur.fr>
To: Brian Warner <brianw_mpo@compuserve.com>
Cc: "[unknown]" <mplist@bitnik.com>
Subject: Re: Halley's Comet Returns In Bits And Pieces
Brian Warner wrote:
>The answer is very succinct and famous: E=mc2
>
>The amount of energy being released by an object, even as small as a grain
>of sand, when moving at 40km/sec is tremendous. To a large degree, what
>you're really seeing is the molecules in the upper atmosphere being excited
>by the energy released by the particle such that the gases begin to glow.
>That's the train ("afterglow") you see. The particle, per se, may not be
>visible but the results of it hitting the atmosphere are.
>
>Brian Warner
Well, I think Roy was on target. It is E=1/2 mv^2, not E=mc^2.
This last equation applies to the fission (or fusion) of matter.
If the light seen was caused by the "disparition" of 0.01g (the weight
of the dust particle ) during its encounter with our atmosphere, it
would be a tremendous explosion. The Hiroshima bomb is equivalent to the
"disparition" of one gram of matter during the Uranium fission. So you
can guess that 0.01 grams would be equivalent to about 1/100th of the
Hiroshima bomb. It would be much more noticeable than just a small
shooting star. :-)
Most of the light seen is caused by the ionisation of the upper
atmosphere caused by the shock of the atoms of the particle and those of
the air.
Alain
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