------- Forwarded Message
To: cambridge-conference <cambridge-conference@livjm.acdot uk>
Subject: CCNet, 2 March 2001
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 11:01:06 -0000
CCNet 34/2001, 2 March 2001
---------------------------
THE METEOR-WRONG SONG
By Matthew Genge
Meteor-rite or meteor-wrong?
Here are some clues to go along.
If it was hot to touch, or glowed bright red;
if it smoked or spat, or sizzled or cracked;
if it made a little hole not a great big crater;
then a meteor-wrong you can expect a bit later.
It if fell from the sky, then when all is said,
its usually been thrown from the neighbour's shed.
If it was black as coal, and crumbles like cake,
then don't bet on it being the next Tagish lake.
If it scared their granny in the middle of the night,
with a bang and a flash of strange coloured light;
if they saw it fall as a great glowing ball,
then it probably wasn't a real meteor-rite fall.
Matthew Genge
Natural History Museum
M.Genge@nhm.acdot uk
[...]
"I'm quite disappointed to discover I've not survived a meteorite
falling from the skies at the speed of sound. But it will give someone
a laugh to discover we were all fooled."
--Sylvia Mercer, 1 March 2001
(1) 'METEORITE' FEVER COMES DOWN TO EARTH WITH A BANG
Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2001
(2) GAMMA-RAY READINGS FROM EROS
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utorontodot ca>
[...]
=================================================================
(1) 'METEORITE' FEVER COMES DOWN TO EARTH WITH A BANG
>From Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2001
http://www.telegraph.codot uk/et?ac=002549632124328&rtmo=weAiMMib&atmo=rrrrrrrq
&pg=/et/01/3/2/nufo02.html
By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent
WITH a supersonic boom, a whoosh and a plop, meteorite hysteria fell to
Earth in a sleepy suburb yesterday morning, leaving a smouldering, fizzing
hole a few feet from a startled woman walking her dogs.
Sylvia Mercer had her close encounter with an unidentified heavenly object
in a quiet country lane in Hopgrove, York. "I was walking my dogs when I
heard two bangs," she said.
"Then there was a rush of wind whistling past my head and a plopping noise.
I froze in terror and thought my last moments had come. When I looked at the
ground I saw a smouldering hole.
"There was smoke and noise coming from it and it was making strange and
frightening sounds. You don't usually expect to get attacked from outer
space while you are out for a stroll. It is absolutely amazing." She ran
home to raise the alarm and then returned to cover the 12in-wide and
5ft-deep hole with a dustbin lid.
Within minutes, police, the Army Bomb Disposal Squad from Catterick,
university geologists and museum experts from York were rushing to the
scene. As police sealed off the crater and prepared to evacuate the area,
meteorite experts at the Natural History Museum in London were commandeering
cars, ready to race to York to examine what they were promised was a
brain-sized 12lb lump of primordial space rock.
Phil Manning, keeper of geology at the Yorkshire Museum, was one of the
first specialists on the scene. He said it was the biggest meteorite to hit
Britain for 100 years. "The bangs Sylvia heard were sonic booms. The
meteorite would be travelling at the speed of sound and the hissing and
popping were caused by the heat it discharged," he said.
A policewoman who was ordering locals to keep away told reporters that the
hole had certainly been caused by a meteor impact. "We just cannot attribute
it to anything else." While bomb disposal experts peered into the hole,
scientists developed theories to explain its strange blue colouration.
Only the meteor and planetary experts at the Natural History Museum in
London urged caution at the growing meteorite hysteria. A mechanical digger
brought in to excavate and retrieve the rock found nothing. And nine hours
after Mrs Mercer's narrow escape, experts told her that it was nothing more
than a low-flying clod of earth.
A high-powered electricity cable, buried 3ft deep, had split, shorted and
blown - causing the gurgling and popping noises. A spokesman for City of
York council said: "The hole was caused by the earth being blown out, not by
an object going in at high speed and burying itself. What flew past Mrs
Mercer's head was nothing more than a big clod of earth."
Last night Mrs Mercer said: "I'm quite disappointed to discover I've not
survived a meteorite falling from the skies at the speed of sound. But it
will give someone a laugh to discover we were all fooled."
Copyright 2001, Daily Telegraph
=================================================================
(2) GAMMA-RAY READINGS FROM EROS
>From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utorontodot ca>
Applied Physics Laboratory
Johns Hopkins University
Laurel, Maryland
NEAR image of the day for 2001 Mar 01
Gamma-Ray Readings from Eros
[http://near.jhuapldot edu/iod/20010301/]
This chart shows the gamma-ray spectrum from the surface of Eros. These
scientific data -- the first ever collected on the surface of an asteroid --
result from 7 days of measurements following NEAR Shoemaker's historic
landing on February 12.
The gamma-ray instrument has two detectors -- marked above by the red and
blue traces -- which picked up clear signatures of key elements in the
composition of Eros. These data, which surpass in quality all the data
accumulated by this instrument from orbit, will help NEAR scientists relate
the composition of Eros to that of meteorites that fall to Earth.
Built and managed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, NEAR-Shoemaker was the first spacecraft
launched in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, small-scale planetary
missions. See the NEAR web site for more details, http://near.jhuapldot edu/ .
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