Skydiver nearly gets hit by a meteorite

Norwegian captures first-ever video of an extinguished meteorite that shot past him soon after he deployed his parachute; search for the rock continues.

A skydiver in Norway captured incredible video of an extinguished meteorite shooting past him soon after he deployed his parachute, something that has never been seen before, let alone been recorded.

“This is the first time in history that a meteorite has been filmed in the air after its light goes out,” geologist Hans Amundsen told the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, Norway’s largest media organization also know as NRK.

Skydiver Anders Helstrup was lucky. The rock very nearly hit him, it passed so close.

Skydiver nearly gets hit by a meteorite

This really surprised me as I thought that meteorites did not extinguish but kept burning all the way down to the ground. Can someone confirm that sometimes they go out at a certain level?

The image on this page shows the meteorite from different frames all in one picture. OK, so it is coming roughly towards the camera, but even so, this one seems to be moving very slowly for something which has just come from space and had been travelling from thousands of miles away - Far slower than I would have thought they travel, but maybe they slow down a lot and cool down when subjected to the Earths atmosphere. The shuttle does not though since it has to have special tiles on its surface to take the heat from the friction of the atmosphere.

It's been posted today already, pretty wicked video though.

I dunno man, are we sure it just isn't a rock tossed by another skydiver?

qmantoo
This really surprised me as I thought that meteorites did not extinguish but kept burning all the way down to the ground. Can someone confirm that sometimes they go out at a certain level?

Yes they do if they are small enough which most are.

maybe they slow down a lot and cool down when subjected to the Earths atmosphere. The shuttle does not though since it has to have special tiles on its surface to take the heat from the friction of the atmosphere.

The burning or "ablation" occurs when slowing down from tens of thousands of kilometers per hour to hundreds of kilometers per hour, after which it reaches "terminal velocity" which gets slower as the air gets more dense and as the object gets smaller.

As the article says they think this might be a piece of a larger bolide which exploded higher in the atmosphere which is what usually happens with larger impacts.

Estimates vary but we think on an average day something like 40 tons of stuff comes crashing into Earth, but most of it is sand grain sized (Which causes the "shooting stars" we see at night.

I remember reading someone tried to estimate the probability of a bolide of significant size striking an aircraft in flight and they came up with it happening once every few hundred years but it was a rough estimate. I don't think there's been a case of a confirmed bolide strike on an aircraft yet, but as this video suggests, someday it could happen, but all the years we've flown without such events suggest it would be a rare event. I do have a recording of a pilot reporting a "near miss" with a glowing bolide, though he doesn't know that's what it is, and also there is a tendency to think it's much closer than it is, so it probably wasn't really much of a close call as the pilot thought. People see these "just over the hill" when in fact they are many, many kilometers away, dozens or even hundreds. The one in the video is close though, provided it's really a bolide and not something that fell out of a plane. It looks like a bolide.

Wouldn't something keep heating up as the air got denser, even as it slowed down some? I've seen meteorites coming in near me (maybe the sand-sized ones, hard to tell) and they seem to blaze all the way in.

Somehow the video all seemed too conveniently awe-struck, like a hoax.

signalfire
Wouldn't something keep heating up as the air got denser, even as it slowed down some?

They do heat up as the air gets denser and if they are big enough, they explode, but that happens at a pretty high altitude. Then the smaller pieces tend to slow down more quickly, and reach "terminal velocity" which can make them warm but not really "burning" hot. Terminal velocity is what a skydiver experiences before his parachute opens, it's more or less a constant speed.

I've seen meteorites coming in near me (maybe the sand-sized ones, hard to tell) and they seem to blaze all the way in.

If it's big enough, and it didn't explode, it could happen, but I think it would be unusual. Meteor crater in Arizona was probably formed by an iron impactor that blazed all the way in because it was probably dense enough to not explode in the atmosphere and it was still going pretty fast when it hit.

We have lots of video of impactors from security cams and they generally don't show them blazing all the way in...they reach a peak brightness at some altitude and then explode or fade out.

You can even use an online program to see what altitude they are likely to explode at based on their size, density, velocity, angle of impact, etc:
impact.ese.ic.ac.uk...
I plugged in some numbers just for fun:

Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 100.00 meters ( = 328.00 feet )
Projectile diameter: 3.00 meters ( = 9.84 feet )
Projectile Density: 2000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 22.00 km per second ( = 13.70 miles per second )
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 1500 kg/m3
Target Type: Crystalline Rock ...

Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 69700 meters = 229000 ft
The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 50800 meters = 167000 ft
The residual velocity of the projectile fragments after the burst is 20 km/s = 12.4 miles/s
The energy of the airburst is 1.19 x 1012 Joules = 0.29 x 10-3 MegaTons.
No crater is formed, although large fragments may strike the surface.

In this example it is predicted to explode at an altitude of 51 km. After it explodes the smaller fragments have a hard time maintaining their speed because they have so much surface area. Most of them probably won't even make a crater when they hit the ground, they are going so slow, as shown at this impact site of fragments of a truck-sized meteor that exploded at about 37 km altitude in 2008:

Meteoroid

2008 TC3 meteorite fragments found on February 28, 2009 in the Nubian Desert, Sudan.

The photo suggests the fragments weren't going too fast when they hit, probably not fast enough to be ablating all the way down, though it's possible they may have been warm. Similarly, if the skydiver captured a meteor fragment, it also didn't look too hot.

Is this really a meteorite? Couldn't it be just something the other skydrier threw?
When they show it in 0.125x speed, it looks like it tumbles and I doubt that a meteorite that should be pretty fast, even after being slowed down by the atmosphere, would have such an unstable flight

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Seems a bit more believable after reading that. I figured if it was a meteorite it should at least be smoking a bit lol.

Ok, I did not see the other thread.
The composite picture with all the images of the meteorite - if the video camera is going at 30 frames per second then thats not moving very fast relative to the skydiver. Any comment on the capturing of the object by the camera?

Is it likely/possible to get that many individual frames with the meteorite in them?

How is this breaking,news?

Just saying ....

reply to post by qmantoo


If you knew the object's mass, and size (and therefore density) you could make a reasonable estimate of its terminal velocity to answer that question, using this math:

www.grc.nasa.gov...

We can only guess though so the estimate could be way off. The article said they were looking for the meteorite on the ground. If they find it, you could figure pretty accurately how fast it was going, but lacking more specifics, it doesn't set off any alarm bells for me saying the number of frames captured would be a problem. I'm more inclined to wonder if it's something that fell out of a plane if there's a problem with the meteorite explanation, but if they find it, analysis will resolve if it's a meteorite or not. In other words, make sure it's not something like this:

Falling Ice Crashes Through Roof, Destroys Colorado Home
That wasn't from outer space.

I find it hard to believe it was a meteorite. It just seems it would be going a lot faster at that altitude, and of course would be a lot darker because of residue from being burnt.

I'd go with something that fell from the plane, or was dropped from another skydiver, or a small rock that somehow made it into the guy's parachute bag while packing the parachute, anything but a meteorite.

I own both the camera that he has on his helmet. From experience, in order for the rock to appear as it does, it would have to be close, small, and slow. I'd expect a meteorite to have motion blur too.

reply to post by qmantoo


Thread here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

LightningStrikesHere
How is this breaking,news?

Just saying ....

I wouldn't call it "Breaking News," but it was unusual enough for me to say "Wow, I gotta read that!" Maybe it happens a lot more where you are, and you're used to it by now, but it was something totally unheard of for me!


I saw a video of a skydiver VERY nearly being clipped by the wing of another plane several years ago, and thought this might be a good one to watch as well, so I stopped in to see.