> One of the accounts quoted somewhere in this long thread says the dog was >"turned to ashes in an > instant." It seems to me that the more likely result of an hypersonic impact on a >dog would be a wide > and uniform distribution of dogburger! I suspect that the observation of "ashes" was >created by a > witness to match his interpretation of the event as "fire from Heaven."
Any object hitting the ground at hypervelocity speed would have so much energy, it would create a crater. Meteorites are slowed down considerably going through the Earth's atmospher. I really would not expect though that the Nakhla meteorite fragments to hit at such high speeds, particularly when you consider the meteorite entered the atmosphere at a very steep angle (30 degrees to the horizontal), and would have to travel through more of the atmosphere before reaching the ground. The other intriguing prospect, is that in a typical strewnfield, the size of the meteorite fragements are larger downstream. So, if the Nakhla strewnfield does extend to Denshal, then you would expect the meteorite fragments at Denshal to be larger than then ones at El Nakhla. Incidently, the largest fragment found at El Nakhla was 1.8 kg. There were no details on the size of the fragments observed to fall in Denshal. But a larger fragment would do more damage if it hits anything. Ron Baalke ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
