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Re: (meteorobs) "Electrophonic" Fireball sound nonsense
Skeptical James Oberg noted cases where the reentering Shuttle Orbiter
reportedly caused it:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf038/sf038p17.htm
Joel Carpenter
> Certainly some meteors may produce sounds, in the direct acoustical sense of
> an energetic object falling through the lower atmosphere, but I am saying that
> these "electrophonic" sounds that are claimed to be produced simultaneously
> with the light flash and somehow "detected" by people without radios is
> nonsense.
>
> Simply doing a back-of-envelope calculation will make it clear this is
> ridiculous. Assuming a big fireball produces maybe 100kW of RF power briefly
> (I doubt it would be that high anyway), at a distance of 60km this would be
> just 0.0002uW/cm^2. The ambient background RF exposure is estimated to be
> around 0.003uW/cm^2. (Mantiply, 1997) Thats the stuff we all are exposed to
> everyday from the radio waves from earth and space. So how can these reports
> claim to be detecting signals less than 1/10th of the background levels? So, I
> would like someone to explain how these weak signals are being picked up by
> "detectors" swamped by background?
> Not to mention the RF near cell towers is 1-10uW/cm^2 and the 800-900Mhz cell
> phone standard (ANSI/IEEE) is 579uW/cm^2. Why are we not bombarded by people
> reporting hearing buzzing and whistling from their teeth or glasses whenever
> they use their portable phones? I havent heard of any such reports, where the
> RF levels are a million times higher than from meteors!!
>
> Mike Linnolt
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