Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Hi Sterling and List, Sterling cited: Park Forest, M'Bale, Holbrook, Benld, Gao and Noblesville. Lets not forget New Orleans...or the one that almost landed in my backyard- Monahans. Newspaper reports (thanks to Mark Bostick) noted that...well- here are the actual excerpts: A four-inch piece of rock, believed to be a meteorite, landed about 30 yards from a group of youngsters playing basketball on the north side of Monahans, while a second, slightly larger rock, was found by a Ward County Sheriff's Deputy at a nearby site this morning. Dang it. Missed that magic 65' circle by 25'. Another quote from the same newspaper report: One of the youths, ranging in age from 8 to 16, said the rock glowed red hot, when it first landed, according to the Monahans News. Well, putting that particular kid's wide age range aside (could have been a wild juvenile hormone fluctuation, or even the result of being in close proximity and getting a massive dose of gamma rays from the newly fallen meteorite)- one wonders whether one of our brilliant 'hick' reporters might not have excitedly asked the question, Was the rock glowing red hot when you first saw it?OBJECTION! LEADING THE WITNESS! It happens. Lest they be not forgotten. Jerry PS...Great math, Sterling. Don't understand it all, but it's good mental exercise trying to. Sterling K. Webb wrote: Ron Baalke wrote: http://www.theomahachannel.com/news/4672177/detail.html Fairbury Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite The chances of this close of an encounter are one in 100 billion, expert said... The object landed about 65 feet from where Kinzie was. Hi, This (unnamed) expert needs a basic course in statistics. Assuming one defines this approach (65 feet) as a criteria for close, then the number of cases of a fall being within 65 feet of a human being are substantial. How many people were within 65 feet of the fall of any fragment of PARK FOREST? There were reports of much closer approaches in M'BALE. A meteorite which hits an occupied car is, of course, closer than 65 feet (and most unoccupied cars, too). Any frag that strikes an occupied house or building less than 65 feet square is a case (dozens and dozens of those). Maw, it's raining rocks! (HOLBROOK) The BENLD car smasher hit only 25 feet from the human occupants of the house. Several GAO frags hit people. Don't forget the Alabama lady in the town I can't spell and am too lazy to look up.. The NOBLESVILLE (Indiana) stone fell literally at the feet of a young boy, within inches! It's a long, long list. Forget the Nebraska glowing rock whacko. Integrating for the varying size of the human population over this time period, I get odds of about 4,000,000,000 to one per year. Lifetime odds are less than 100,000,000 to one! This assumes the individual perceives the fall, hence these odds is for observed falls only. 65 feet is far enough away that the fall of a small fragment, which is what most of them are (remember the power law), is easily missed, just like the small fragment itself, so the actual rate is much higher. A 130 foot circle has over 53,000 square feet, a big target. Assuming that those humans don't bunch up too much (they do, but they all count as one person only in this survey), from low to high fall rate estimates, I gauge 6 to 15 cases per year, observed or not. Spread out, people! Wait for the meteorites to fall in your lap (or 130 foot circle)! Sterling K. Webb --- __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Sterlng W. wrote: This (unnamed) expert needs a basic course in statistics. Assuming one defines this approach (65 feet) as a criteria for close, then the number of cases of a fall being within 65 feet of a human being are substantialIntegrating for the varying size of the human population over this time period, I get odds of about 4,000,000,000 to one per year. Lifetime odds are less than 100,000,000 to one!... 65 feet is far enough away that the fall of a small fragment... A 130 foot circle has over 53,000 square feet, a big target. Assuming that those humans don't bunch up too much (they do, but they all count as one person only in this survey)... Hola Sterling, List, This reminds me of two things: 1. That the amount of falls has less bearing on the probability of a human hit. The factor that determines that is simply the average size of the strewn field and the number of meteorites that have big strewn fields. 2. My favorite book, Le Petit Prince once again...when the wise author discusses how much space people perceive they occupy vs, what they really do. The updated figure is that if you put everyone in their private 1 meter X 1 meter box in a grid, the whole human population today would easily fit in a big field 80 km X 80 km (50 miles X 50 miles) - just a bit bigger than Metropolitan Paris...(the same comparison I think I recall the book gave over 50 years ago). Let me volunteer my comments: I would give the 'unnamed' expert a break and say that he has solved an easier problem than you. Remember, Sterling, you are writing-off the claimant as a wacko, so anything the claimant says doesn't count. An easier problem is: The targetted wacko is in the grandstands (called planet earth) and a homerun is hit (single meteorite stone falls into the grandstands). What is probability the wacko will be the lucky one to catch THAT PARTICULAR BALL (his mit has a reach of 65 feet)? Statistics has always been so misused precisely because people want numbers but are not interested in doing the work and understanding how they are derived and what their constraints are. We can't be guilty of that! The answer to that question of odds can be at least as great as 400 billion to one (event probability, not time-probability). Four times even greater than the quoted 'expert'... Of course, you are thinking several homeruns could be hit in that game (strewn field), and there are many games going on (many meteorites), but a fan might say It will never happen to me again in a 100 billion years..., viewing it like playing a lottery. OK, you can't run and you can't hide from meteorites...but I don't think we are dealing with a fan using that sort of scientific logic. Thus, your back of the envelope and the 'experts's' calculation is a factor of 6, 60, or even 1000 different...but we need the 'expert' to clarify which one, and if it is only 6, that's not bad. On your chosen and defined problem, I went this route: There is a recovered witnessed fall in the USA-48 very nearly annually of 1, what's the area of the region, about 7.5 million square km? That gives odds in one year of 6 billion to one, and over what's left of his lifetime you assigned 40 years that leaves 150 million to one...and you and I are in basic agreement!! No big surprise... I would go on to sensibly fudge: a factor of say, 10-100 due to forgetting about witnessed falls and concentrating on witnessed falls with sizeable strewn fields, leaving, say 15 million to one (on the conservative end). And then there is the factor of say, 2 for the falls that are never registered, leaving true odds in 40 years at 1.5 million to one, according to my interpretation - which now deviates from yours (in which we agree). If you don't agree with my fudge factor of 10, I'll dispute your area of the circle of diameter=130 (you were 4 times too large): Your odds actually would state odds of 16 billion to one in a given year according to your methodology, if you need to correct for the proper circular area. You then get a weighted average for a lifetime, but if you read the article carefully, there was no time period stated by the expert: The chances of this close of an encounter are one in 100 billion, expert said... I'd definitely agree with you to that point that we can have some fun with the sloopy journalism, but if you read the article, is the alleged targeted man-not the 'expert'= who says Only once in a 100 billion years, and it will probably never happen to me again, but this is not the 'expert' talking. And it sounds like the problem defined by the baseball game to me, not the meteoriticist... So we are all in the same ballpark, as far as I can tell, even the 'expert', until proven to be a quack in his own right...or that's how it looks to me... save any stupid errors I could have committed:) Saludos, Doug
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
I wrote: say 15 million to one (on the conservative end). And then there is the factor of say, 2 for the falls that are never registered, leaving true odds in 40 years at 1.5 million to one make that 7.5 million to one:) __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Doug, I feel like Mike Myers in one of his old movies, who does mock prostration's while chanting we're not worthy; we're not worthy. Of course, I calculated the area by squaring the diameter of the circle instead of the radius. I'm not worthy; I'm not worthy. It was late; I'd just taken do not operate heavy machinery medication; the Nakhala dog ate my homework... But... I never include glowing rock falls as a matter of principle, so I was saying let's leave this out of the count for now. Correcting for the dumb error in area, 2 to 15 times a year becomes .5 to 4 times a year. Now we tackle clustering. I mentioned it. Spread out, people! Humanity is not evenly distributed on the planet Earth taken as a whole. It's actually fairly extreme. The people critters appear to be repelled by continentality and altitude, as one real expert termed it. That is, the majority of humans live below a certain low altitude and within a certain close distance to the shore of a sea or ocean. I'm not going to go find the original reference, but as I recall, if you use figures like below 500 meters and within 100 kilometers, you get about 70% of the human race! Yet Denver is not deserted and the middle of the Midwest is not empty, despite what folks in New York think... My personal opinion is that when one is dealing with the intersection of two unrelated sets of random data, the best course is to just go random all around. People are moving targets, you know. I tried to calculate the annual meteorite fall rate by working up from the number of meteorite hits on cars (and trucks) over time, despite the same problems, like the uneven distribution of people. Cars are distributed similarly to their owners, and though they range more widely afield, they spend most of their time in the garage with their owner nearby. I started with the MORP figure of 25,000 falls a year for the entire Earth (true rate, observed or not) and concluded that the true rate had to be 2.5 or even 3 times greater at a minimum to account for the ability of meteorites to ruin your Chevy Nova and turn it into Peekskil legend! That's 60,000 to 75,000 per year with an option on 100,000. The method was that of collisional cross sections, familiar in physics, but never applied to meteorite falls that I knew of. It was a sweet and simple methodology. At the time I knew of no one else chewing on the problem, but as soon as I posted the study on the List... It seems that Phil Bland of the (formerly named) British Museum had just concluded an exquisite study by a much more elaborate and delicate (and exhaustive) method and had determined a minimum fall rate of the range 40,000 to 60,000. And our own Rob Matson, it seemed, had been working on the problem, based on finds on those vast and treacherous playas he works so well, and arrived at 80,000, again by a radically different method. That's a remarkable concordance. There are two huge problems with us all. 1. How do you count the multiple stones that constitute a fall? If you measure at the top of the atmosphere, it's usually only one rock. But it ain't a meteorite until it touches the Earth, so does every stone in a fall count as one? Clustering again. Besides which, no one knows the fragmentation coefficient -- it's a complete unknown. That doesn't help. Even pairing data doesn't help much. 2. By definition our data only include meteorites detected by humans and made known to the rest of mankind generally. How many do we miss? I believe we miss a lot. A find is a meteorite we missed seeing fall. A fall is a meteorite we saw fall then went and picked up. The ratio of finds to falls is about 20 to one. Even for the durable iron, which waits much longer to be found, it's almost 10 to one. Jeff Grossman opined that a country like Japan, with a high population density more uniformly distributed and a very well-organized society would have a higher percentage of falls. He was right. Calculating from Japan alone produces a very low annual fall rate for the Earth, he said. He was right. The figure was LOWER than the MORP estimate. Where we differed became apparent when you looked at each individual case for the 20th century. Excluding questionable accounts where no stone was actually examined and the case of an ancient inherited stone from heaven which was actually just a rock but is still listed in the catalog (because it's always been there, an historical pseudo-meteorite). Almost every 20th century meteorite in Japan is a fall! The 20:1 find/fall ratio is almost reversed to a 15:1 fall/find ratio! A huge percentage of 20th century Japanese meteorites hit something: a building, a lamp, some new paving, a ship in the harbor, and so forth. They produced damage that must be accounted for and explained: Who has done this?! The most important thing is that it
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Here's another story about it, with a photo. Still looks not unlike a weathered condrite. http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1650932.html __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Here's another story about it, with a photo. Still looks not unlike a weathered condrite. http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1650932.html ?? This is ordinary piece of slag. Just looks like on this photo. I can be wrong, but. -[ MARCIN CIMALA ]-[ I.M.C.A.#3667 ]- http://www.Meteoryt.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.PolandMET.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.Gao-Guenie.com GSM +48(607)535 195 [ Member of Polish Meteoritical Society ] __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 22:08:23 -0400, Darren Garrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://webpages.charter.net/garrison6328/wrong_or_rite.jpg BTW, I just noticed that I got my color-keying flipped around. Switch red for blue. __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Could be a fair call Marcin. I have pieces of slag just like it. The other thing is that if you watch the video at the link below it does look a bit different from other angles and doesn't really appear to be of a stony nature. It does look more like slag or iron. Cheers, Jeff - Original Message - From: Meteoryt.net To: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2005 11:04 AM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite Here's another story about it, with a photo. Still looks not unlike a weathered condrite. http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1650932.html ?? This is ordinary piece of slag. Just looks like on this photo. I can be wrong, but. -[ MARCIN CIMALA ]-[ I.M.C.A.#3667 ]- http://www.Meteoryt.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.PolandMET.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.Gao-Guenie.com GSM +48(607)535 195 [ Member of Polish Meteoritical Society ] __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Hello Everyone, I just hope hollywood never stops making meteorite impact movies with exploding stones that glow red hot and leave smoke trains that whiz by people's heads. Makes it all the more easier to tell the real thing from this stuff. -Walter Branch - - Original Message - From: Ron Baalke [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Meteorite Mailing List meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 8:04 PM Subject: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite http://www.theomahachannel.com/news/4672177/detail.html Fairbury Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite NU Professors Examining Rock The Omaha Channel (Nebraska) June 30, 2005 FAIRBURY, Neb. -- A Fairbury man was watering his yard last week when he had a very rare and close encounter with a possible meteorite. Brad Kinzie was out watering his yard in the wee hours of the morning Saturday -- trying to avoid the hottest period of the day -- when an object whizzed by his head and landed. It came over my head, probably, about a foot and a half. I could feel the breeze, Kinzie said. It was silver and it kind of had red and black on the back of it and smoke. The object landed about 65 feet from where Kinzie was watering. I stood ... here looking at it, 'cause it was still glowing. I says, 'Wow,' Kinzie said. Kinzie left it there to cool off, and made two wishes on his falling star. One of my wishes came true. My oldest brother wasn't speaking to my sister for two years. They got back together, he said. Kinzie is checking with University of Nebraska astronomy professors to see if it is a real meteorite. If it is, Kinzie is in very rare company. The chances of this close of an encounter are one in 100 billion, expert said.. I just been busy, people calling me on the phone, Kinzie said. Kinzie wouldn't say what his second wish is. After all, he said, it hasn't come true yet. Only once in a 100 billion years, and it will probably never happen to me again, he said. Kinzie said if it is a meteorite, he will probably sell it. Collectors have been known to pay thousands of dollars for rare meteorites. __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Yes, for a mere $500,000.00 you can make his second wish come true! After consulting eBay, he is convinced it is the first witnessed lunar. Cone on, take a chance! No thank you. __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Dear List; I tend to hear circus music play every time I go back to this thread. We get one of these spoof about every few months. Call in the clowns! Did anyone check to see if it really could have boinked him on the noggen? Dave F. Adam Hupe wrote: Yes, for a mere $500,000.00 you can make his second wish come true! After consulting eBay, he is convinced it is the first witnessed lunar. Cone on, take a chance! No thank you. __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Look at the photo at this site. It is small, and fuzzy (the picture, not the rock) but doesn't look entirely unlike a pretty badly weathered chondrite with a little bit of fusion crust and a little bit of metal. So I'm not ready to rule out just yet that he has a real meteorite-- a cheap NWA that he bought on Ebay or elsewhere and is trying to make up some story about. http://www.theomahachannel.com/news/4672177/detail.html# __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Nebraska Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite
Ron Baalke wrote: http://www.theomahachannel.com/news/4672177/detail.html Fairbury Man Says He Was Nearly Hit By Meteorite The chances of this close of an encounter are one in 100 billion, expert said... The object landed about 65 feet from where Kinzie was. Hi, This (unnamed) expert needs a basic course in statistics. Assuming one defines this approach (65 feet) as a criteria for close, then the number of cases of a fall being within 65 feet of a human being are substantial. How many people were within 65 feet of the fall of any fragment of PARK FOREST? There were reports of much closer approaches in M'BALE. A meteorite which hits an occupied car is, of course, closer than 65 feet (and most unoccupied cars, too). Any frag that strikes an occupied house or building less than 65 feet square is a case (dozens and dozens of those). Maw, it's raining rocks! (HOLBROOK) The BENLD car smasher hit only 25 feet from the human occupants of the house. Several GAO frags hit people. Don't forget the Alabama lady in the town I can't spell and am too lazy to look up.. The NOBLESVILLE (Indiana) stone fell literally at the feet of a young boy, within inches! It's a long, long list. Forget the Nebraska glowing rock whacko. Integrating for the varying size of the human population over this time period, I get odds of about 4,000,000,000 to one per year. Lifetime odds are less than 100,000,000 to one! This assumes the individual perceives the fall, hence these odds is for observed falls only. 65 feet is far enough away that the fall of a small fragment, which is what most of them are (remember the power law), is easily missed, just like the small fragment itself, so the actual rate is much higher. A 130 foot circle has over 53,000 square feet, a big target. Assuming that those humans don't bunch up too much (they do, but they all count as one person only in this survey), from low to high fall rate estimates, I gauge 6 to 15 cases per year, observed or not. Spread out, people! Wait for the meteorites to fall in your lap (or 130 foot circle)! Sterling K. Webb --- __ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
