One issue that seems very odd is that the hole in the ice is so nice and round. And, there does not appear to be much ice ejected from the area where the meteorite entered. I would have expected to see a large number of big chunks of ice lying around.
Dave -----Original Message----- From: ChemE Stewart <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, Feb 28, 2013 1:15 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Russian meteor coincidence odds The primary assumption in the Arxiv paper I referenced is that the meteor tracked in a line to the 25' dia hole in the ice "Assuming that the hole in the ice sheet of Lake Cherbakul was produced by a fragment of the meteoroid is also a very important hypothesis of this work. More importantly, our conclusions relies strongly onto assume that the direction of the trajectory of the fragment responsible for the breaking of the ice sheet in the Lake, is essentially the same as the direction of the parent body." You would think a 50kton blast might knock pieces off track a bit. Stewart On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 1:07 PM, Alexander Hollins <[email protected]> wrote: if it were in orbit around it, there would have been an additional vector to its motion. Tracking information verified a straight line trajectory from what I've read. Good thought though. On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 9:19 AM, Edmund Storms <[email protected]> wrote: I suggested an explanation that apparently was lost in the discussion. Suppose each asteroid has a swarm of smaller rocks in orbit around it. Suppose one of these rocks was in an orbit that caused it to approach the earth from the opposite direction at the time of the meteor strike in Russia. Overlooked in this discussion was at least one other large meteor reported near Cuba, which could have been part of the same swarm. This is important because any close encounter with an asteroid might result in the earth being bombarded by large rocks coming from directions different from the path of the asteroid as the asteroid gets close. This makes protection that much more difficult. Ed On Feb 28, 2013, at 9:06 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: I would point out: 1. The event did occur. 2. A causal connection between the two objects seems exceedingly unlikely, since they came from different directions at different times. No one has suggested how there could be a connection, as far as I know. 3. Therefore it is coincidence, no matter how unlikely that may seem. - Jed
