Unidentified Object crashes into QLD mountain

It has to be space junk. As if anything of value would be found in Queensland!

Interesting story, but probably nothing out of the ordinary.

reply to post by Chadwickus

Valentich is exactly the one I was thinking about when I made that comment.
That Westall case also gets you thinking a lot.
Talking about SE QLD (as we are in this thread), when I lived on the Gold Coast in the 90's, there was a period of several weeks where there were numerous UFO reports in the papers, on the news, etc... The reports included several reports of "globes" flying across the flight path of passenger planes approaching Brisbane airport, as reported by pilots. It was all very interesting at the time.

OP.... Until some clear evidence comes of something actually happening i won't judge either way.... it's extremely difficult to believe anything without photos or video evidence.... even if it was a craft of some sort would the authorities allow the public to view it? I doubt it....

Originally posted by fooffstarr
It doesn't sound like a meteor to me. You would know if you were watching a meteor, and this particular guy didn't think it was one.

It sounds like a meteor to me. The fire was probably un-related, but people are good at jumping to conclusions.

A lot of people are unable to tell meteors from other objects. This comes up all the time, so I have a standard reply just to answer this specific question:

People often mistake meteors for UFOs or planes about to crash - meteors have a strange knack for playing tricks on unsuspecting eyes. The brain has trouble interpreting the size, distance and therefore the actual speed of a light source/object in the sky with no/few visual cues, so it makes up the missing information. This is the basic principal of an optical illusion, and the nature meteors (brief and bright) makes them ideal candidates.


This page explains in a bit more detail about why meteors can appear to be closer to the ground (or the observer) than they actually are.

This diagram should help you visualize what is going on:


Basically, the lower down in the sky (or closer to the horizon) a meteor appears to be, the further away it probably is. In the exceptional cases where this is not the case, and a meteor is still luminous, and less than 1km away from you, unless you're within diving distance of a bunker, that would probably be the last thing you ever saw.

In 1908, what is thought to be a fragment of a comet exploded somewhere between 5 and 10 km above Tunguska, devastating an estimated 2150 square km and knocking down 80 million trees!


Here's a guide I wrote listing the characteristics of meteors:
Seen a swift/very swift moving light (colored or white) in the sky?


[edit on 19-6-2009 by C.H.U.D.]

Originally posted by fooffstarr
I just came on to post this story. Glad someone else noticed it too.

There was a truck driver interviewed on TV earlier that sparked my interest.

He said something along the lines of:

'I was watching this light in the sky, it was bright and round and all of a sudden it plummeted straight into the mountainside. A fire broke out almost immediately and the whole area was covered in smoke'.


It doesn't sound like a meteor to me. You would know if you were watching a meteor, and this particular guy didn't think it was one.

The 6pm news will be on shortly so I hope to see some more details.

how does bright and round plummeting out of the sky and starting a fire not sound like a meteorite? that's *exactly* what one looks like.

Here is a news story on what they "found". Seems they never looked...

UFO or tall tale?
June 19, 2009 - 12:49PM .
The pub at Gin Gin is usually pretty quiet on a Friday morning.

But today they've been flooded with inquiries from metropolitan news outlets trying to get to the bottom of a meteor mystery reported near the small town west of Bundaberg.

The operators of the Gin Gin Hotel, who report more than 10 media phone calls this morning, say they have no idea what started a fire in bushland about 40km north-west of the town.

At this stage, neither do authorities.

The mystery began unfolding when it was reported emergency crews were rushing to Gin Gin following reports of a suspected plane crash into the side of a mountain.

Police soon confirmed, however, that no planes were missing and it was not a plane crash - but police officers were on their way to investigate a fire.

An "unidentified flying object" was then reported to be responsible.

A Department of Emergency Services spokeswoman said despite reports to the contrary, emergency crews had never headed to the scene.

Police said officers could not confirm the cause of the fire, but there had been reports "something fell from the sky".

AGL Action Rescue Helicopter spokesman Colin Brown confirmed the chopper had been sent out this morning but said investigators had "no bloody idea" what caused the fire.

"Our boys are saying there's a spot fire or two there ... but what started them we can't be sure," he said.

"It could be anything - someone may have seen a shooting star and thought it started the fire, but we don't know."

Gin Gin resident Nicky Williams said locals had been talking about the mystery.

"But I've only heard because I'm sitting here at the pub," she said.

It was a Chupacabra!

Its craft just crashed landed...watch for the cattle mutilaton reports in the coming weeks....

Seriously, whatever it was it definitely hit the ground anf lit up the bush....SO....where is the crater?

There has been absolutely no report of a crater of any sort.... aint that interesting?

I think until we send some people in to there with metal detectors and radiation meters, we should just sit back, have a beer and enjoy the entertaining theories coming out of this great land!

Originally posted by Melbourne_Militia
It was a Chupacabra!

Its craft just crashed landed...watch for the cattle mutilaton reports in the coming weeks....

Seriously, whatever it was it definitely hit the ground anf lit up the bush....SO....where is the crater?

There has been absolutely no report of a crater of any sort.... aint that interesting?

I think until we send some people in to there with metal detectors and radiation meters, we should just sit back, have a beer and enjoy the entertaining theories coming out of this great land!

I watched this on the news yesterday and I believe it is a meteorite, and a small one at that.

So there would not be much of a crater if its a rocky area, and say a 1 kilo meteorite would make a good fireworks display before it hit then breaking up on impact showering the surrounding undergrowth with red hot fragments.

I will have a beer with you mate!

reply to post by Bob Down Under


That's the point though, any meteorite fragments that make it to the ground would not be "red hot".

Before a meteoroid hits the atmosphere it's fairly cold. Not surprising after being in space for a while. It then goes through a process called "ablation", where material is stripped away, taking much of the heat with it, while entering the atmosphere. This is during the luminous phase which only lasts a few seconds. Tens of seconds max in the case of meteoroids that large enough (or hard enough eg iron) to keep some of their cosmic velocity for a while such as a few meters diameter rock.

Usually, in all of these cases, the meteoroid is slowed down to well below cosmic velocity above 10 or 20 km altitude, after which it falls at free-fall velocity in the stage known as "dark-flight" before it reaches the ground. In the majority of cases this amounts to minutes of cooling, compared to a "brief flash" of heating while the meteoroid was luminous for few seconds.

Ever hear of someone throw a frozen turkey into a roasting hot oven and it coming out piping hot after a few seconds in there? What happens when you increase the diameter of the "turkey"? hint: large objects take a long time to heat up

And then after another 120+ seconds of "arctic-huricane" like conditions?

There has never been a confirmed report in recorded history of a fresh fall starting a fire.

If anything did make it to the ground, chances are there would be sonic booms heard/felt too. Same with space-junk which is also a possibility.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


i like your info C.H.U.D, but your theory has one flaw.

Where you said "Basically, the lower down in the sky (or closer to the horizon) a meteor appears to be, the further away it probably is."

The problem i see with this is the mountainous area in which it was spotted. With Mountains around the horizon differs greatly, in this case its probable it was closer than it seemed.

Cheers for your input.

reply to post by scubagravy


I'm going to be watching this thread. I hope they actually find something! Of course, if it's something that isn't "normal", we'll never hear about it.

It's just an act of nature according to Qld Police.



www.police.qld.gov.au...

Ah the ol 'hand of god' excuse There will be more to come.

reply to post by scubagravy


More to come like this?

[edit on 20-6-2009 by Bob Down Under]

reply to post by scubagravy


Thanks scubagravy, but I think you missed the point. Mountains make little difference if any.

Meteors become luminous at around 80-100 km. It's extremely rare for a meteor to remain luminous below 40 km. The atmosphere becomes so thick to all but the most huge meteoroids that have enormous momentum, that it's like us trying to wade through treacle. Even the tallest mountains are less than 10 km tall, and your average mountain range is more like 3-5 km.

Here's another diagram that should illustrate to you what is occurring in a situation like this.



Notice that I've represented the meteor entering the atmosphere coming in at a low angle. For meteorites to survive, the angle has to be within certain limits. Too low, and they skip off the atmosphere like stones skimming across water (known as an "earth grazers"). Too steep of an angle (and/or too fast) and the forces are so great on the meteoroid that all but the hardest metal meteoroids detonate soon after hitting the atmosphere.

The physics is well laid down, and backed up by photographic evidence. It is possible for meteoroids to be luminous near to the ground, but as I said before, it would have to be exceptionally large. If this were the case, there would be sonic booms, and the meteor would likely appear to be brighter than the Sun. If it remained luminous all the way down to the ground, there would be a large crater, and it would be obvious for miles around that there had been an impact, due to the blast wave and ground shaking.

This meteor (if it was a meteor) was relatively small. It's extremely easy to misjudge the size and distance because of the way our brains process the information we see, often "filling in the gaps" where information is missing.

In this case, because meteors are surprisingly bright, and the brain interprets bright (big) lights as being close, and dim (small) lights as being far away (which is generally the case on the ground), the far off, but apparently large meteor will always appear closer than it is to the eye. In the sky there are few visual cues, as there are usually on the ground. Sometimes clouds can help in providing cues, but that's about it. Without these cues, our brains simply cant work out the distance of a light, and our brains are forced to assume that big and bright means close.

That goes for you, me and everyone else. Our brains are just wired that way. It means that meteors are often mistaken for UFOs, since the majority of people are aware a meteor could not be close, but unaware that it's a glitch in us that makes it seem that way. I and most meteor observers have experienced this effect first hand, and it's easy to see why people are taken in by it.

If you have ever witnessed the Moon illusion, that works along similar lines, although the "meteor illusion" blows the socks off the "moon illusion" each and every time, guarenteed!

I hope that you can see why it is pretty unlikely that the meteor was any where near the mountain. If not, I give up

[edit on 20-6-2009 by C.H.U.D.]

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


Thankyou C.H.U.D.,
Much easier to understand now. I see what you mean. Being the little man behind the mountain in your diagram can see up to the tip of the mountain, at that angle he would see the meteorite until in reached the 40km point in the sky, seeming that it would be much closer than it would appear. Im not too sure of the eyewitness accounts but im sure they were closer to the point of impact than that arc of 40kms where the meteorita as you say would no longer be lit up.
Being the fact still that nothing has been found, your explanation remain plausable, thanks for your contribution.

reply to post by scubagravy


You're welcome scubagravy.

I think you have indeed grasped the concept. Well done.

It's easy to forget that Earth and its atmosphere are both curved, which also plays a part in misleading the unwary. The same concept also applies to aircraft, in that they may be flying at constant altitude, but if you observe an aircraft flying away from you on the ground, it simply gets lower and lower in the sky, apparently.

If the sun happens to be setting, and the light illuminates the contrail under the right atmospheric conditions (making short-lived contrails), this has fooled allot or people in the past. Here's another clip although not the extremely short contrail and foreshortened due to perspective, but it's nice clear footage.

Now consider an aircraft traveling in the opposite direction to the examples above, so that it's coming towards you, instead of flying away from you. It would appear to move up and away from the horizon, right?

What would happen if the engines then cut out at just the right time and the aircraft continued along its path without turning left or right? It could crash into you, if the timing was right, but this is a highly exaggerated example - in real life you might be able to observe the aircraft for a good few minutes as it approached you, and it would have to cut out much nearer to overhead than a meteor would, if it was to hit you. I think anyway. I'm no aircraft expert, and I could be wrong about that. It would depend on the initial altitude and gliding capabilities I guess.

Once a meteoroid is decelerated enough by the atmosphere (towards the end of the luminous phase/start of the dark-flight phase), it's trajectory would become progressively more curved (like an artillery projectile).

In extreme cases where a significant portion of the cosmic velocity (around 1km/s+) is retained all the way into the lower (thicker) atmosphere by a very large object, the object may have ceased to be luminous (not sure where the cut-off velocity for that is, but I suspect it's around 2-3 km/s) but could still impact the ground with enough energy to cause some localized damage.

If you were unlucky enough to observe a meteor like this before being hit, it would not appear to move much (close to being a "point-meteor", but not quite), but just get brighter and brighter, till it faded out, and then hit you a few seconds later.

Had the angle been different, the Great Lakes daylight fireball of 1972 might have hit the ground in a manner similar to the above example, but as it was, it just skimmed the atmosphere and went back out to space.

This is footage that most probably have not seen before. I hadn't, but came across it just now whilst looking for the well known clip (2nd clip below).




Just for comparison, here's footage of the Peeskill Fireball, which dropped a meteorite in upstate NY, hitting a car!


The above two events are the longest events ever to be captured on camera as far as I know. I think the Peeskill fireball was observed for 60 or 70+ seconds.

Anyway, the info above should give you a better idea of how to work out which way a meteorite might fall. The most reliable way to work out a fall site is to use photographs or video if they are available and triangulate the trajectory, but failing that it can usually be done by gathering witness reports, although more are usually discarded than are used. The most reliable/valuable reports tend to come from amateur/professional astronomers since they can plot the path accurately using the stars and other celestial bodies for reference.

One (more) thing to keep in mind, even with my experience, I find it hard to work out which way a meteor is traveling (away or towards me), unless it can be identified as a member of a meteor shower. Meteors belonging to showers are generally not as bright as the types of object we have been talking about, which might be better described as small-medium sized asteroids.

Going back to the suspected meteor in question, if it was an earth grazer that was observed, it may not even have reached 40 km altitude before heading back out to space or "burning" itself out.

I'm not sure thinking about 40 km as a "cut off" if you are, is a good idea. It's just that in the vast majority of cases, meteors have been slowed down to the point that they can no longer impart enough energy on the air to make it glow as the meteoroid passes through it by that altitude.

For any given meteoroid/object, that cut-off could be at almost any altitude. There are always rare exceptions to "rules" like this, but for the reasons I gave above, I think it's unlikely that the meteor reached 40 km altitude whilst still luminous in this case.

I'd have to check to be sure, but it's either 20km or 40km where the air becomes thick enough for a sonic boom to propagate down to the ground, so if no booms were heard directly below the meteoroids flight path (assuming it's a populated area), that means nothing made it below that altitude, and that's pretty much case closed for me.

Booms are usually quite a good indicator of meteorite falls. Check previous threads here on ATS, there are fairly numerous examples. Here are just a few threads that I took part in recently (heated at times!):

UFO - meteor like object with sonic boom above Dallas and Austin Texas!

Massive object crashes over Edmonton, Canada

Loud explosions in Hampton Roads area

[edit on 21-6-2009 by C.H.U.D.]

Originally posted by tezzajw
It has to be space junk. As if anything of value would be found in Queensland!


you have to be kidding

Are you sure it was meteor?

So look one more time.