[HN Gopher] Meterorite chunk crashes into house, bedroom, pillow
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Meterorite chunk crashes into house, bedroom, pillow
Author : walrus01
Score : 46 points
Date : 2021-10-12 21:50 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| Diederich wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylacauga_(meteorite)
|
| The Sylacauga meteorite fell on November 30, 1954, at 12:46 local
| time (18:46 UT) in Oak Grove, Alabama, near Sylacauga. It is
| commonly called the Hodges meteorite because a fragment of it
| struck Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges (1920-1972).
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I hope that happens to me some day, I would immediately try to
| find out if it was a quasi-crystal!
| smarx007 wrote:
| I hope you have a dog to wake you up in time to save your head!
| tomcam wrote:
| What, and sacrifice a pillow? You savage.
| Zenst wrote:
| What type of pillow can stop a meteorite is what I'm wondering.
| Sure the roof may of slowed it enough but for it to still be
| intact from that and at that size, it would of been dense to make
| it that far without breaking up or burning up and I'd of expected
| a more substantial roof would be needed to slow it. Then the
| final detail, It would still be pretty darn hot.
|
| So I'm somewhat sceptical.
| MrWiffles wrote:
| "Aww, I loosened it for ya!" - Roof
|
| (Like the wide opening a jar of pickles her husband couldn't)
| s5300 wrote:
| Don't check the internet tomorrow if it ends up being a
| MyPillow.
| vnchr wrote:
| Sounds like it may have hit the mattress before rolling between
| the pillows, and the photo and title are mildly
| sensationalizing with hitting the pillow directly.
|
| > "...I rolled back one of the two pillows I'd been sleeping on
| and in between them was the meteorite."
| marcodiego wrote:
| I won't make numerical estimates here, but we can consider
| that: - the piece of meteorite had already
| achieved terminal velocity, - most of the remaining
| energy was lost on the collision with the layers of the roof
| and - final collision was dampened by the pillow,
| mattress foam and bed structure.
|
| By the size of of the object on the photograph, if it has
| approximately the same density of earth stones, the story seems
| 100% believable.
| MrWiffles wrote:
| I read this and thought, "damn alien assassins can't even pull
| off headshots anymore!" Good thing too, this lady got wicked
| lucky!
| [deleted]
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Do you want Venom? Cause this is how we get Venom.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Remindes me of that:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylacauga_(meteorite)
| xwdv wrote:
| Would the rock have had enough force to kill her if she had slept
| on that side of the bed that night?
|
| What a way to go, imagine there could be a rock hurling through
| the universe for billions of years waiting to reach its final
| destination by crashing into your skull and killing you as you
| sleep peacefully.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| >Would the rock have had enough force to kill her if she had
| slept on that side of the bed that night?
|
| Can a lump of iron kill you if it fell on your head from the
| ceiling? Yes, it can.
| JadeNB wrote:
| Why does the meteorite have the energy to crash through the roof
| of the house, but then stop on a pillow (without damage to the
| pillow, as far as the picture shows)?
|
| (I'm not sure why we have this bizarrely sequential headline--
| surely no-one would say "crashes into house, bedroom, pillow" in
| conversation--when the actual headline, "Woman rocked awake by
| meteorite chunk crashing into her bedroom", seems (if punny) just
| fine. But I do like that the article leads with a picture of a
| meteorite sitting on a pillow. You know, as proof.)
| lovecg wrote:
| Speak for yourself. My conversations are specific, detailed,
| factual.
| amluto wrote:
| Flexibility. A roof will apply substantial stopping force to a
| fast moving object over a very short distance until the roof
| breaks. (And bit more as the broken piece of roof
| accelerates.). A pillow or mattress will deform a lot without
| breaking, so the smaller stopping force will be applied over a
| much larger distance.
|
| (Energy change = force times distance)
| teraflop wrote:
| I don't know how much stock we should put in the exact sequence
| of events recalled by someone who had just woken up, but it
| doesn't seem that implausible to me.
|
| It's not like the meteorite would have been traveling at
| thousands of miles per hour. By the time it got to ground
| level, it would have slowed down to its terminal velocity. Some
| amount of energy would have been absorbed in its collision with
| the roof, and it wouldn't have had time to accelerate very much
| in the remaining fraction of a second before coming to rest on
| a soft surface.
|
| By way of comparison, I can easily imagine a dropped bowling
| ball going through a roof but not doing much damage to a bed
| and pillow.
| rkagerer wrote:
| True but I actually like the sense of passage conveyed by the
| existing title as you picture it closing in on the target.
|
| Like that rock had a rough night and just wanted someplace soft
| to crash.
| Zenst wrote:
| My thoughts as well and spent some time trying to think of how
| and details and it still don't seem to feel right.
|
| Roof don't look substantial enough to slow something that size
| and dare say density enough for it to be finally stopped by a
| pillow. Then the entry marks, just don't feel right, given the
| speeds and also the temps, I'd expect some entry marks and in a
| way, a more cleaner hole perhaps. Then the aspect that it would
| still be hot and no pillow would be able to withstand the kinda
| heat it would still have.
|
| Too much of this feels off, so be interesting how those tests
| come out.
|
| Makes me wonder - how hard is it to fake a meteorite?
| outworlder wrote:
| > Roof don't look substantial enough to slow something that
| size and dare say density enough for it to be finally stopped
| by a pillow
|
| Why not? It was in free fall. Wouldn't a rock be similarly
| stopped?
|
| > given the speeds and also the temps
|
| What speeds? It would have slowed down to terminal velocity
| way before reaching the ground.
|
| What temps? It should be pretty cold by then. The glowing red
| hot meteorite on the ground is a Hollywood invention.
|
| > Makes me wonder - how hard is it to fake a meteorite?
|
| Depends on who you want to fool. Researchers with access to
| equipment? No chance. News organizations? May not be that
| difficult.
|
| > Then the aspect that it would still be hot
|
| Nope. Not that hot. There's a debate on whether or not it
| will even be warm. Probably cool to the touch.
|
| http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/our-solar-system/75-our-
| sol...
| Nzen wrote:
| Oh. I didn't think I would need to ever point to the 'is it a
| meteorite?' [0] flowchart. I guess how hard you have to fake
| depends on who you are convincing. Slag can fool your
| friends, but anyone who studies or collects meteorites will
| probably require some multi stage metallurgical process to
| convince.
|
| [0] https://geoscience.unlv.edu/what-to-do-if-you-think-that-
| you...
| willcipriano wrote:
| Looks like most of the force of the impact was absorbed by
| the rafter and then it deflected off into the room.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'm assuming the last layer of ceiling it penetrated slowed it
| down enough. A pillow and bed can also absorb the shock better
| than something rigid.
|
| I'd also assume that someone who is in shape can throw a rock
| hard enough that it penetrates dry wall easily, yet not
| penetrate a pillow. Similar amounts of energy were probably
| involved by the time the meteorite had entered the bedroom.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I don't think this is a "why" question.
|
| Apparently it _did_ have the right energy to crash through the
| roof but not damage the pillow.
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| I think this meteor came in a glancing angle and broke up at high
| altitude. If it were to come straight down it would have burnt
| up, or done a lot more damage.
|
| The terminal velocity of a baseball is ~95mph, a brick is
| ~150mph, so the meteorite must have been slowed down to around
| this speed before it hit the roof. It also would have had 4 min
| of freefall Canadian airblast to cool it off.
| nawgz wrote:
| > The terminal velocity of a baseball is ~95mph
|
| Source?
| asdff wrote:
| I think the most intriguing aspect of this report is the dog
| somehow sensed this meteorite was on its way.
|
| "she awoke to the sound of her dog barking, giving her a moment's
| notice before a rock from outer space hurtled into her bedroom."
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Perhaps another piece fell nearby just before this one.
| skulk wrote:
| Maybe a rock hurtling at terminal velocity straight towards
| your head (approximately) makes some interesting high frequency
| sound waves that only dogs can hear?
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Dogs definitely have some sort of "sixth sense" or are very
| attuned to the environment.
|
| Tons of reports of dogs waking their humans prior to impending
| but hard to detect dangers such as earthquakes...
| lisper wrote:
| In the case of earthquakes, dogs can detect compression waves
| which travel faster than the stronger and more destructive
| transverse waves. In the case of a meteorite it is harder to
| imagine a plausible mechanism. As most meteorites are
| supersonic, it's not possible for any waves to arrive at
| their destination before they do.
|
| [UPDATE] Reading some of the other comments it occurred to me
| that this particular meteorite was probably traveling at
| terminal velocity, and was thus sub-sonic. So it's possible a
| dog could hear its approach.
| outworlder wrote:
| > "But the workers had seen a meteorite, or a falling star,
| explode and there was a couple of booms"
|
| Dogs don't really like 'booms'.
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(page generated 2021-10-12 23:00 UTC)