Investigation into possible meteorite landing on NorCal home

[jeff of pa]

Nov 5, 2022
251,920 views • Nov 5, 2022
Many people across Northern California on Friday reported seeing a bright light in the sky tumbling down. Several people captured the phenomenon on camera. Video taken from El Dorado County showed a bright ball descending from a dark night sky.



he can probably build a mansion if he can find the meteorite

 

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[jeff of pa]

LIVE Orionid Meteor Shower 2022​

may be over
Started streaming on Oct 16, 2022
• Started streaming on Oct 16, 2022
Every year in autumn, our planet passes through a ribbon of space-debris left behind by Halley’s Comet, and Earth’s atmosphere colliding with this trail of ice and dust provides an impressive annual light show called the Orionids meteor shower. The first Orionid shooting stars are already showing up in the sky, and the show will continue through the first week in November or so, but the peak of the meteor shower will happen in the early morning between October 21 and 22. Residents of the Northern Hemisphere who look at the southwestern part of the sky at around 3-4 a.m. can expect to see between 20 or 30 meteors per hour streaking across the sky until sunrise. It will appear that the meteors are originating somewhere between the Orion constellation (hence the name) and the Gemini constellation, but they should be visible in other parts of the sky too, as long as it’s not too cloudy. These bits of ice and burning space dust slam into our atmosphere at 41 miles per second, and when they burn up, they can produce some impressive light streaks and even the occasional fireball.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Made up TV drama. Meteorites are cold to the touch by the time they arrive on the earth's surface. No meteorite caused that house fire.

The house is in Nevada county approx 250 miles from the computed and observed path of the meteorite. The meteorite, if it made landfall (most don't), would have landed near San Francisco or Fresno. The meteorite was traveling from the northwest to the southeast so it never came near to Nevada county.

See for yourself:

International Meteor Organization

We received 22 reports about a fireball seen over CA and NV on Friday, November 4th 2022 around 12:53 UT.

fireball.imo.net

 

[Red-Coat]

Made up TV drama. Meteorites are cold to the touch by the time they arrive on the earth's surface. No meteorite caused that house fire.

The house is in Nevada county approx 250 miles from the computed and observed path of the meteorite. The meteorite, if it made landfall (most don't), would have landed near San Francisco or Fresno. The meteorite was traveling from the northwest to the southeast so it never came near to Nevada county.

See for yourself:

International Meteor Organization

We received 22 reports about a fireball seen over CA and NV on Friday, November 4th 2022 around 12:53 UT.

fireball.imo.net

Agree with all of that... except that small meteorites can be hot to the touch by the time they reach the ground, but not nearly hot enough to start a fire. Those who have recovered small meteorites immediately after a witnessed fall have sometimes described them as "too hot to comfortably hold in the hand". Larger ones can be still cold enough in the centre that they quickly develop frost on the surface as the temperature equilibrates after landfall. I recall only one instance of a meteorite creating a 'fire', but it arose from a domestic electrical socket being damaged and creating a short-circuit that caused some bed-linen draped near the socket to partially ignite.

Meteoroids transition to 'dark' flight as they cool down during deceleration to terminal velocity and the observed fireball is usually both short-lived and very high up in the atmosphere. For there to be the possibility of creating a fire, the bolide would need to be extremely large such that superheated material survived all the way to the ground. That clearly wasn't the case here and, in any case, the trajectory reports don't support the possibility of material falling near the area where the fire was.

 

[jeff of pa]

I don't know, I have read stories, at least Ever since Kecksburg of Fires From {fireballs}Meteorites , so there seems to be a Debate on That. Also if a Meteorite struck something that caused it to explode, or just drop & Tip Over something, a fire could follow.( candle, Something on Stove, Fireplace, lit burn Barrell )so I won't go out on a Limb and say Nope ! or Yep ! on that one.
There will always be "One in a Billion's

 

[Clay Diggins]

Agree with all of that... except that small meteorites can be hot to the touch by the time they reach the ground, but not nearly hot enough to start a fire. Those who have recovered small meteorites immediately after a witnessed fall have sometimes described them as "too hot to comfortably hold in the hand".

I have to respectfully disagree. Anecdotal at best in my opinion. Physics gets in the way of those accounts.

The average meteoroid ablates for less than a second and the meteoroid surface that survives (not the plasma cone) reaches a temperature of about 1000 degrees for a depth of a fraction of a millimeter during that second. The interior of the meteoroid will still be at or near the static temperature of 455 degrees below zero. Then, if there is anything left of the meteoroid, it will fall for 3 to 4 minutes through the stratosphere and troposphere with air averaging between 76 degrees below zero and 5 degrees below zero. By the time the meteorite reaches the ground that millimeter crust has cooled to the temperature of the interior - which may be the same as the ambient surface temperature for a very small meteorite and will almost always be below ambient temperature for larger meteorites. I think the point is that the dark fall period has a greater effect on the final meteorite temperature than the second or two of ablation.

Despite the many accounts to the contrary the numbers just don't add up for meteorites causing fires. Darn calories keep getting in the way.

Of course you could extrapolate. Boxes of matches being hit just right or candles being knocked over (at 120 miles an hour) with the flame surviving and lighting the kindling the candle was surrounded by. Doing that type of logic we already know cows are the cause of fires. Everyone knows Chicago burned down because of Mrs O'Leary's cow.

On the other hand a very large meteorite smacking into the earth is going to release a lot of energy. Some scientists speculate that fires could be caused by the impact itself while many others see the potential for fire as a second or third order effect.

 

[Red-Coat]

I have to respectfully disagree. Anecdotal at best in my opinion. Physics gets in the way of those accounts.

And I have to respectfully disagree with your assertions and point out that physics does not "get in the way of those accounts". To the contrary, it provides credible explanations for them. Much of what you say is simply wrong.

The temperature of meteoroids in space within our solar system depends on a number of factors: size and geometry; optical properties; motion; and distance from the sun. Their temperatures can be calculated, taking into account the Solar Constant for any given distance from the Sun, but it most certainly is NOT a “static temperature of 455 degrees below zero”. You’re quoting a Fahrenheit temperature close to absolute zero (equating to minus 270 Celcius vs absolute zero of minus 273) but that’s the baseline temperature of outer space itself, as set by the background radiation from the Big Bang. It’s not the temperature of every object that’s in space, and certainly not for objects within our solar system.

Meteoroids can come from deep space, from the Asteroid Belt or from collisions or impacts on and between asteroids within it, as well as from impacts on other solar system bodies (Mars and our Moon). Most meteorites arise from Earth’s orbit crossing clusters of asteroidal debris which are pulled in by Earth’s gravity and those have frequently had exposure to solar warming over long periods of time such that they are nowhere near your “static temperature”. It varies widely, but the average surface temperature of a typical asteroidal body is only around minus 73 degrees Celsius and this has been confirmed by IR radiation measurements. If things were as simple as you suggest, then the Moon (with no atmospheric blanket and no seismic activity) would also be 455 degrees below zero (minus 270 Celcius). Clearly, it isn't!

It's a complex subject which doesn’t have a neat set of answers because there are so many influencing factors but, irrespective of the start temperature when a meteoroid hits our atmosphere, the final temperature when it reaches the ground (whether surface temperature or true temperature or after equilibration) also depends on: mass; compositional nature; specific heat, thermal conductivity; whether it’s an individual meteoroid, part of a shower or has fragmented during flight; and its incoming trajectory in relation to velocity and flight time.

Although the traditional model is that the compressive effect on the air in front of the meteoroid creates the vast majority of the heating; that transfer to the meteoroid is slow because gases are poor conductors; and most of the heat is carried away by ablation, that’s a simplification which belies the range of possibilities. Other factors come into play which can upset the model. This graph is from “Temperature Gradients in Meteorites Produced by Heating During Atmospheric Passage” [Sears 1975]:



What it shows is that, for typical conditions, the interior temperature of a nickel-iron meteorite likely only remains below freezing point (ie below 0 degrees Celcius) if it has a very short passage and a moderate diameter. Sears provides similar graphs for stony meteorites which show the same pattern but with a less pronounced effect because they have a lower thermal conductivity. In general, temperatures in the order of +200°C have usually penetrated to a depth of 5-10mm with flight times in the region of 10 seconds. Consequently, a meteorite with a diameter of less than 10-20mm may well be as hot as 200°C all the way through to its centre when it reaches the ground. As the size goes up, the overall heat-load drops, but only meteorites beyond 20mm are capable of having a sub-zero interior temperature when they reach Earth’s surface and - even then - may equilibrate to a temperature perceived as warm or hot to the touch if they’re not much bigger than that.

The following list of ‘hot’ meteorites was compiled by Don Blakelsee of Wichita State University. It’s true that the ‘evidence; is of a qualitative nature (in the absence of the observers having a thermometer to hand). The accounts are usually based on the testimony of a single person or, a best, a small number of people. Some of them can be discounted as fantasy or exaggeration, such as descriptions of luminescence or incandescence, but others have a higher degree of credibility:


Alfianello [1883] (228 kg) - alleged to have singed the grass slightly [Heide, 1964]
Farmington [1890] (90 kg) - hot when dug up (Farrington, 1915)
Ferguson (1889) (77.5g of 220 g fall) - too hot to hold
Cabin Creek [1886] (48.6 kg) - hot (Farrington, 1915)
New Concord [1860] (46.8 kg of 230 kg fall) - as though it had lain on the ground exposed to the sun's rays (Farrington, 1915)
Warrenton [1877] (45.5g of 1.6 kg fall) - snow was melted and frozen ground thawed, but pieces, though warm, were easily handled (Farrington, 1915)
Braunau [1847] (39 kg) - too hot to touch for 6 hours (Bagnall, 1991)
Allegan [1899] (31.8 kg) - too hot to handle (Farrington, 1915)
Juromeha [1968] (25.3 kg) - incandescent when discovered; still warm morning
Bath [1892] (21.2 kg) - had to use gloves (Farrington, 1915)
Nanjemoy [1825] (7.44) kg - sensibly warm (Farrington, 1915)
Searsmont [1871] (5.4 kg) - quite hot (Farrington, 1915)
Mazapil [1885] (3.95 kg) - still luminescent for a while after impact, hot when finally picked up, could barely be handled (Farrington, 1915)
Lucé [1768] (3.5 kg) - too hot to handle (Burke 1986]
Tomatlan [1879] (0.9 kg) - still at a burning heat
Cross Roads [1892] (170 g) - grass near the spot was dead and looked as if it had been killed by fire (Farrington, 1915)
Queen's Mercy [1925[ (?? Of 7 kg fall) - smoking hot; burned a woman's hand (Burke, 1986)

There have been occasional more recent reports which post-date Blakeslee’s research for historical eyewitness accounts and which are potentially more reliable. In addition, at the other end of the spectrum, Blakeslee documents some ‘cold’ meteorites:

Dhurmsala [1860] (150 g of 32 kg fall) - had frost on its surface when recovered [Burke, 1986]
Forest City [1890] (36.4 kg of 152 kg fall) - fell on dry grass but did not char it (Farrington, 1915)
Drake Creek [1827] (5.2 kg) - cold when freshly fallen (Farrington, 1915)
Harrison County [1859] (0.7 kg) - not warm
Lumpkin [1869] (0.4 kg) - neither hot nor cold

Also Colby [1917] (104 kg) reportedly had frost on the surface when found, although Blakeslee doesn’t mention it.

Although Sears provides compelling evidence that “size matters”, the nature of these reports seems to underline that it’s not an “all-important” criterion and can be over-ridden by other factors.