Meteorite Shower Impact In Nagpur District Of India, May 22, 2012

'Vinoba Meteorite Shower 2012'

Here is the news coverage I could find along with some pictures. It is already listed on the wikipedia page for Katol India. This could explain some of the "sounds" being heard around the world. Not much coverage on this. I find it way more newsworthy than Obama, Romney blah blah blah. Enjoy!

‘Stony iron meteorites may have hit Katol’

A team of scientists from Mumbai left for Nagpur on Tuesday to investigate the impact of last Tuesday’s meteorite shower in the Katol region, which left several houses damaged. The team is expected to reach Nagpur on Wednesday early morning.

Meteorites add to Tuesday sound mystery

NAGPUR: It's official now. The fire balls seen by some people in Akola district and city on Tuesday were meteorite showers spread over an area of over 200km. They travelled in eastern direction and some fell in Katol tehsil of Nagpur district. It is the first time that meteorite shower has been recorded in Vidarbha.

"The phenomenon of balls of fire shooting from the sky accompanied by huge blast-like sounds was witnessed by many last Tuesday evening around 5 p.m. The shower was travelling in the eastern direction and is the first such meteorite shower recorded in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra," Adur told IANS.

Nagpur meteorite shower

Tentatively named 'Vinoba Meteorite Shower 2012', the team will probe whether any crater has been formed in the region, covering a distance of around 200 sq km, said Bharat Adur, head of Akash Ganga Centre for Astronomy (AGCA), Thane.

"The piece disintegrated soon after entering our atmosphere and the meteorites hit the surface at a speed of over 17 km per second. If it had not disintegrated, the effects could have been disastrous for parts of Nagpur and other areas," Adur pointed out. He explained that the meteorite which hit at Lonar in Buldhana district some 52,000 years ago was around 100 metres in diameter and has created a crater measuring around 4,000 metres diameter and a depth of 450 feet which is now famous as the Lonar Lake.

Scientists to probe Nagpur meteorite shower

Katol From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A large meteorite shower in the Katol region damaged several houses on 22nd May 2012 between 2 and 2.30 pm. The phenomenon of balls of fire shooting from the sky accompanied by huge blast-like sounds was witnessed by many in the evening around 5 p.m. [7] [8] The shower was traveling in the eastern direction and is the first such meteorite shower recorded in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. The meteor shower was accompanied by earth tremors measuring 2.1 on the Richter Scale. The biggest among the meteorites weighed 673.5 gms. The surface was completely burnt showing dark brown roasted colour with sub-rounded edges. GSI said the sample is a stony meteorite (Chondrite) dominated by silicates (olivine and others) with a little iron. These are the oldest rocks in the solar system.

Really cool site with many more pics!!!
Katol, India Meteorite Fall 22MAY2012 Meteorite Photos

Searched all over here for this, so if it is posted it's hidden good.

Nice i would love to come across a smokey crater with a smoldering rock laying in the centre. Reminds me of Transformers for some reason

The phenomenon of balls of fire shooting from the sky accompanied by huge blast-like sounds

I dont think these are the sounds being heard around the world. They are more of a bending metal on metal kind of sound if i am not mistaken. Like something is being stretched.

"Meteorite shower", implying more than one object source entered the atmosphere at more or less the same time, resulting in parts of the objects ending up on the ground, sounds unlikely to me. Although not impossible, an event like this would be relatively rare.

It sounds more like there was a single object, which broke up at altitude, showering the ground below with meteorites, which does happen on a regular basis:

Meteorites are known to fall as single, discreet objects; as showers of fragments from a meteor which breaks up during the atmospheric portion of its flight; and (rarely) as multiple individual falls. The initial mass and composition of the meteoroid primarily determine its eventual fate, along with its speed and angle of entry into the atmosphere.

The American Meteor Society Fireball FAQs

Or, alternatively, two or more unrelated fireballs. Not every fireball drops rocks on the ground.

Reports are often confused in cases like this, so it would not surprise me that there was just a single object that actually dropped rocks on the ground.

For it to be a "meteorite shower" in the strictest terms, it would have to be proved that two or more discrete objects but from the same source, entered the atmosphere, and made it to the ground, which could be done in two ways. Either finding two discrete "strewn fields" composed of exactly the same type of meteorites, or by photographing the fireballs from two locations, which allows the orbit and therefore a possible source for the shower to be identified

Regarding the sounds and vibrations picked up by the seismographs - it may just be the sonic boom that is created when a meteorite or meteorites falls to the ground, which is common in cases like this. Objects very rarely make it down low enough to leave any kind of crater, and in this case, multiple meteorites hitting people's roofs suggests the object broke up at high altitude, showering a large area with fragments.

A meteoroid which disintegrates tends to immediately lose the balance of its cosmic velocity because of the lessened momentum of the remaining fragments. The fragments then fall on ballistic paths, arcing steeply toward the earth. The fragments will strike the earth in a roughly elliptical pattern (called a distribution, or dispersion ellipse) a few miles long, with the major axis of the ellipse being oriented in the same direction as the original track of the meteoroid. The larger fragments, because of their greater momentum, tend to impact further down the ellipse than the smaller ones. These types of falls account for the “showers of stones” that have been occasionally recorded in history. Additionally, if one meteorite is found in a particular area, the chances are favorable for there being others as well.

The American Meteor Society Fireball FAQs

Great now besides battling dysentery from their food the poor Indians have to deal with orbital bombardment too! Tough break.

Sometimes it seems like life is just too unfair.

reply to post by BASSPLYR


Are you kidding?

It may as well have been gold nuggets raining down on peoples roofs.

Have a look on ebay if you want an idea of how meteorites sell for.

Here's one example of a small piece of a recent fall that recently sold on ebay - not even a gram

Something like this might actually help people find a way out of poverty.

Good looking out. I forgot the big picture. Meteorites are worth a fortune.

If I lived there I'd be walking around with a basket strapped to my head with some pillow in the bottom and hope for the best. Maybe catch some meteorites while walking around town. Id disguise it like a turbin too so that nobody tries to jack my idea or my meteorites.