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Re: (meteorobs) Fireballs & sonic booms




Steve, thanks for posting on this... you have indeed travelled a bit
in your life! I'm not sure how you managed to end up in "Murky Pond
Bottom USA" - aka New England - but anyway I'm sure glad you did... ;>


BTW, on your comment re: hypersonic shockwaves... I'm also no physicist,
but the two sounds I've experienced in my life - the first one was from
an unrecorded fireball seen in the Everglades as a young adolescent - I
remember as both being essentially simultaneous with the visible meteor:
no perceptible delay. I think a shockwave would need to travel 100s or
even 1000s of times the speed of sound to reach the ground that fast!


However, one thing you mentioned did trip a bell for me, so to speak. :)

In general, the emission of an object at one wavelength need not be well
correlated with its emission at another wavelength distant from the first
on the electromagnetic spectrum: Gamma Ray Bursters and radio quasars are
good deep-space examples of this rule.

By the same token, the radiometeorists on our list will correct me if I
stray here, but there's also no (well-described?) correlation between
a meteor's radio reflectivity or duration and its visual brightness.

So is it unreasonable to suggest there might also be little correlation
between the production of ELF or VLF radio waves and visual magnitude?

Clear skies!
Lew


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