Hi Eric-
It seems likely that in most cases, a burn of just a few seconds is
sufficient to reduce more than 95% of the original mass to dust and gas. Of
course, you need to define what the original mass actually is, since scale
effects will become important as the mass increases. Also, a lot depends on
how the original mass breaks up- and with peak forward ram pressures
measured in tens or hundreds of MPa, most bodies do break up. That exposes
much more surface area than just the outside of the original body, and
accelerates the loss of material to ablation.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Meteorites USA" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 3:59 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Fireball Temperature?
Hi Laurence,
Thanks for the response! I'm humbled by your participation on this
question... I appreciate it. I do have another question... ;) of course.
Given the extreme temperature, and the massive pressure exerted on the
meteoroid body while in it's incandescent state (ablation phase?), and
taking into account the very short duration of this "meteor" state
phenomena, would you agree that a 5-10 second "burn" would be sufficient
enough to ablate 90% of a larger body's original mass? Assuming of course
the body is an ordinary stone type meteoroid.
It just seems like such a very short period of time for something to
sublimate into gases and physically ablate into such a small fraction of
it's original mass.
Regards,
Eric
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