When Skydiving, Watch Out For Meteorites

[Julie Moriarty]

A skydiver in Norway captured incredible video of an extinguished meteorite shooting past him soon after he deployed his parachute.

They run the clip slower and slower until it's pretty obvious what it is.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIIzckUv2Mo

[Myk Rian]

Too close for me.

[Jerome Stanek]

this was discussed on another forum and it doesn't look like the rock is going all that fast. also is that a small hole in his parachute where it looks a little charred.

[Mike Henderson]

Think of how many meteorites come down in a year. Or how many have come down in recorded history. And yet, we know of only one person (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130220-russia-meteorite-ann-hodges-science-space-hit/) ever hit by a meteorite.

I guess the earth has a lot of empty space - not occupied by a person where the meteorite hits.

Mike

[Mel Fulks]

I remember from elementary school that they are not meteorites until they land. This is the first ,and probably last ,time
I will get a chance to use that information.

[Pat Barry]

I don't believe this was a meteor. 1) it was going far too slow 2) it didn't look like any meteorite I've ever seen pictures of, 3) no vapor trail 4) no huge explosion or hole in the ground where it landed. Looks to me like someone dropped a rock from a bit above this guy for the show biz aspect of things

[Mike Henderson]

I don't believe this was a meteor. 1) it was going far too slow 2) it didn't look like any meteorite I've ever seen pictures of, 3) no vapor trail 4) no huge explosion or hole in the ground where it landed. Looks to me like someone dropped a rock from a bit above this guy for the show biz aspect of things
A scientist was quoted as saying that the rock probably slowed down as it reached the denser lower atmosphere and was traveling at "terminal speed", about the same speed as if it had been dropped from an airplane. The movement through the air at that lower speed would dissipate most of the heat that had accumulated from the higher speed through the upper atmosphere.

Mike

[Pat Barry]

Meteors enter the atmosphere at speeds ranging from 11 km/sec (25,000 mph), to 72 km/sec (160,000 mph!). When the meteoroid collides with air molecules, its high level of kinetic energy rapidly ionizes and excites a long, thin column of atmospheric atoms along the meteoroid’s path, creating a flash of light visible from the ground below. This column, or meteor trail, is usually less than 1 meter in diameter, but will be tens of kilometers long. -- previous from Meteor FAQ - American Meteor Society

[Larry Edgerton]

Very cool Julie, thanks for posting. My wife and I went last year, but no meteorites. My terminal velocity was 154 mph. I would assume a meteor would settle into its own terminal velocity by the time it reached that low of an altitude.

Larry

[Brian Ashton]

I'm sceptical of it. My hunch is that it's traveling too slow to have been a falling rock. I would think it would have been traveling around 300mph so I would think it would have gone through the cameras field of view in an instant. Unless he's using a hidef and high speed camera but even then I just don't see it, so to speak.

[Curt Harms]

I wouldn't be surprised if we all have 'meterorites' on our roofs. I was watch a show on one of the discovery network channels and a scientist type went to a typical suburban house with a magnet and ran it over the shingles. Several 'grains of sand' were attracted to the magnet. Looked at them under a microscope and said some were most likely bits of meteorites. Yeah, I'm as skeptical of a lot of these shows' conclusions as anyone else - ancient aliens, anyone? - but that seemed legit.

[John Coloccia]

I've consulted an expert in these matters.

286600

[Brian Ashton]

I wouldn't be surprised if we all have 'meterorites' on our roofs. I was watch a show on one of the discovery network channels and a scientist type went to a typical suburban house with a magnet and ran it over the shingles. Several 'grains of sand' were attracted to the magnet. Looked at them under a microscope and said some were most likely bits of meteorites. Yeah, I'm as skeptical of a lot of these shows' conclusions as anyone else - ancient aliens, anyone? - but that seemed legit.

I'm not doubting that there are hundreds if not thousands of tonnes of meteorite dust and rocks falling every year but that one, considering it just fell about 150,000 feet through the atmosphere, appeared to be going a bit too slow.

[David Weaver]

If we knew the FPS rate on the camera and the descent rate of the guy, we could figure out if it was close to 300 miles per hour.

That said, there is enough money to be made on youtube that it would be worth it to stage videos, and has been in the past. Advertisers do it all the time now, but quite often they leave them plenty fake enough for folks to be able to tell that they're fake (like the "jeff gordon test drive" video, etc).

Well, I guess even above money, there are plenty of people who just like the attention, too.

[Larry Edgerton]

I don't see the problem. Meteors fall to earth constantly, people skydive a lot and usually with a camera, just seems inevitable that at some point the two events would cross. The probability that one would be caught by a skydiver on tape was increasing with time. So , maybe time is up?

As to speed there are so many factors involved, weight, air resistance, angle to the earth, elevation of the intersection, speed of the parachutist, particulars of that camera, etc. etc. that I discount anyone just guessing, including myself. But it is a cool video, again, thanks Julie.

Larry

[ken masoumi]

The man that took the video was on tv explaining why he waited over 18 months to publicize it,basically he was looking for the meteorite on the ground all this time to have proof that it was infact the same one in the video clip,and maybe because it's worth a lot of money and didn't want anyone else to know the approximate location.

[Ole Anderson]

I agree with Larry.

The last replay was slowed down 100 times from real speed (x0.01). The frames were about 3.3 seconds apart, which would have the real frames being spaced about 0.033 seconds apart or at 30 frames per second, a standard video speed. The difficult part is to tell how far the rock fell between frames. To know that you need to know how big the rock was and how far away it appeared. If it were going 300 mph that would be 440 feet per second. 440 ftps/30 frps = 14.7 feet of travel between frames. It seems reasonable that the rock travelled roughly 15 feet between frames. And it seems that a terminal velocity of 300 mph as suggested is reasonable. I buy it as being a real event, not a Photoshop event.

How we see the world is changing in part to that little camera called GoPro. My son just went to TN on a motorcycle off-road trip with 3 buddies. From the motel he was able to post 3 edited (with music) video clips. Amazing.

[Brian Ashton]

I agree with Larry.

The last replay was slowed down 100 times from real speed (x0.01). The frames were about 3.3 seconds apart, which would have the real frames being spaced about 0.033 seconds apart or at 30 frames per second, a standard video speed. The difficult part is to tell how far the rock fell between frames. To know that you need to know how big the rock was and how far away it appeared. If it were going 300 mph that would be 440 feet per second. 440 ftps/30 frps = 14.7 feet of travel between frames. It seems reasonable that the rock travelled roughly 15 feet between frames. And it seems that a terminal velocity of 300 mph as suggested is reasonable. I buy it as being a real event, not a Photoshop event.

How we see the world is changing in part to that little camera called GoPro. My son just went to TN on a motorcycle off-road trip with 3 buddies. From the motel he was able to post 3 edited (with music) video clips. Amazing.

For a 30fps camera the pictures that captured the actual rock were incredibly clear and crisp. I sceptical how a standard camera could capture that. Heck they can't even get a clear picture of a lumbering bigfoot so how did they get such crisp clear pictures of a rock falling at 300mph.

Also, the rock is falling at a very similar angle to the other skydiver. After a rock falling through 150000 feet of progressively denser atmosphere, and not wearing a wing suit to help stay aloft longer, don't you think it would be falling more vertically as gravity and air resistance increased?

Nup! not buying it. There are more hoaxes posted on the internet than legit and this is just another in a long line.

[Ole Anderson]

For a 30fps camera the pictures that captured the actual rock were incredibly clear and crisp. I sceptical how a standard camera could capture that. Heck they can't even get a clear picture of a lumbering bigfoot so how did they get such crisp clear pictures of a rock falling at 300mph.



In bright sunlight a GoPro Hero can have a shutter speed as fast as 1/8192 second. At 30 frames per second. http://gopro.com/support/articles/what-are-the-minimum-and-maximum-shutter-speeds-for-hero3plus

I agree that it could be photo shopped, but it also could be legit.

[Erik Loza]

I (probably like other folks...) have seen meteorites coming down in the night sky many times. I would have assumed that real meteorite would have been traveling much, much faster. They seem like a bullet in real life but then again, that is not really empirical. Fascinating if this is legit.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

edit: I was Googling this and according to this guy, it has been shown that this was a rock that was indvertently packed with the chute, not a meteorite. Hope these links work...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/04/08/skydiving_meteorite_it_was_a_rock.html
http://norskmeteornettverk.no/wordpress/?p=1497

[Myk Rian]

I don't know. Seems like it started too far away to have come from the chute.
I think it was a chunk of poop coming off an airplane. :D