It seems to me that much of the observed visuals and sound are due to conventional things. These are my opinions:
-The so-called anomalous luminous structures around the meteor in the video footage(s) are a combination of the windshield glass and cheap lens elements creating light refractions. They are not "pinches" or other exotic phenomena. Minimal experience in photography denotes that this is simple lens flare.
-The multiple cracks of sound are result of the meteor fragmenting into pieces, each piece skipping like stones on a lake as they impinge upon the atmosphere at supersonic speeds. Hypersonic speeds (such as 40,000 mph) can reduce nearly instantly to supersonic speeds (700+ mph) as is seen in the EDL phases of Martian landers. This is what happened to the meteor.
-That the meteor entered the atmosphere at such speeds, its train ionized and became an electrical event like a comet or lightning. All fireballs are this. The super-heated air expanding around the space rock(s) and fragments creates thunder, heard as multiple cracks (as witnessed in terrestrial lightning) recorded on the audio of the Russian videos.
-As the meteor created an ionized environment nearly instantly, as in lightning, ground-to-sky lightning leader(s) may have been present.
-The concussion of expanding air around the ionized train created a multi-staged shock wave that blew out the windows and rooftops of local buildings.
-As in the Shuttle Columbia, the meteor exploded into hundreds of smaller fragments probably scattered over hundreds of miles. Pieces of it will be found incrementally, for years, many of which are probably already kept by authorities who are not forthcoming with such data at this time. The more fragments that are found that match in composition, the more they will be proven to be from the same object.
dahlenaz
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
dahlenaz wrote: Here are some more details to consider. First off do we know for sure that the object stopped over russia? Look at how fast it was going and how high it appears while going out of sight based on the video from this angle.
Consider these thoughts about the event zone and fragmentation.
The two objects in this image above are the short-lived ones that i think are associated with the two trails of vapor. Whatever happened at the flash/fragmentation point, where the cloud formed during explosive release, seems to have not stayed with the third object, as though a jar was broken and the contents were spilled out violently. I've seen the behavior of this during drop tests of boxes full of stuff. I can do an experiment to demonstrate this if i can't use some of the video.
The burble behind a moving object is powerfull and will capture material. Gradual release can occur, or if the airflow hits the contents "just right" total spillage will occur. It is real tricky to get total spillage at the deployment location.
Fragmentation of the object might have exposed some of its contents to violent spillage while material remaind held in the burble of the two fragments and then dispensed gradually as the objects tumbled. d...z
...
Sparky
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Just because you can not see a "trail" does not mean that there is none. It may have gone into dark mode. What disappointed me was not seeing an arc. Maybe there was one in the biggest flash. But most of the electrical discharge was in glow mode.
Yes, there is some lens flaring, but the ground fog moving up to meet the downward discharge, then obscuring objects after the discharge subsides, appears to be part of the electrical event.
If the only way you look at these videos is to pause, then you will miss a great deal of activity. Get an editor and stretch the timeline, to see the "boiling" action of the coma.
CharlesChandler
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
justcurious wrote: The explosive sound and blowing out of windows occurs many seconds after the flashes of light.
Right. The sonic boom travels at the speed of sound. Since the meteor was 12~15 miles high, and judging from its elevation in the sky at least 3x further away horizontally, the explosion was at least 50 miles away from the observers in Chelyabinsk. At 5 seconds per mile, the sonic boom would have arrived 250 seconds, or about 4 minutes, after the closest approach of the meteor. That gave everybody plenty of time to go to their windows, to look out and see what lit up the sky. These are the people who were injured by broken glass when the sonic boom hit.
On my webpage, when I'm talking about "popping" sounds that are coincident with the break-up of the meteor, that's a whole different phenomenon.
justcurious wrote: There is one problem with your theory of an EMP explosion (and no shock wave).
It isn't my theory — it well established fact. There is a sonic boom, but long before that hits, and coincident with the break-up of the meteor, people have heard much quieter sounds — little crackling noises. The only form of energy that could travel virtually instantaneously from the meteor to the observer's location is an EMP.
justcurious wrote: Would you mind elaborating on "somehow converted back to mechanical energy near the observer"?
This is not well-understood, but researchers believe that the conversion could be some sort of piezo effect due to the electric field, or Faraday induction from the time-varying magnetic field, or both. Regardless, something is getting objects in the vicinity of the observers to vibrate, and that can only be from an EMP. But I didn't see any reports of this phenomenon in Chelyabinsk.
justcurious wrote: Do you mean that the meteor has one charge (for example negative) and the ionized air around it has another, or is it charge separation within the meteor itself being caused by some sort of induction?
The charge separation appears to be in the bow shock. An object moving through the air has a boundary layer of compressed air against its forward face. Normally, as speeds increase, this boundary layer gets compressed even more. But spherical objects moving at supersonic speeds develop detached bow shocks, which defy the principles of fluid dynamics, meaning that this is an EM effect. So what happens is that neutrally charged air hits the boundary layer, and the heavier nucleons penetrate deeper, while the lighter electrons are stripped off. The threshold for this effect is achieved when the inertial forces of the incoming nucleons exceed the electric forces keeping the electrons bound to the atoms. Once it forms, electrostatic repulsion inside the bow shock is what "detaches" it from the object. So everything inside the bow shock is positively charged. On the leading edge of the bow shock, there is a layer of electrons that were stripped from the nucleons that burrowed into the bow shock. The charge separation is between the inside of the bow shock and its leading edge. The air outside of the bow shock is nominally neutral, and the meteor/bow shock/coma is neutral when taken as a whole.
Wikipedia wrote: As the aircraft increases speed the shock cone gets tighter around the craft and becomes weaker to the point that at very high speeds and altitudes no boom is heard.
An aircraft has a somewhat different profile, compared to a bolide, where the bow shock is accentuated with speed. Also, at high altitudes, the air is thinner, so the pressure gradient isn't as steep, reducing the effect.
justcurious wrote: Perhaps the meteor flying at supersonic speeds can create a sonic boom, however common sense tells me that it had something to do with the 20X Hiroshima explosion(s).
I'm not sure that "explosion" is the right word here. Certainly the Tunguska event was an explosion, since a sonic boom simply isn't going to knock down millions of trees. So that one was definitely an explosion. Most other meteors don't really explode — they just sorta break up into lotsa pieces. The reason why I don't think that the Chelyabinsk bolide "exploded" is just that the smoke trail is sustained over many miles, not a single spherical puff from an instantaneous explosion. So I think that this was a break-up, with a flare due to charge recombination.
Note that if the entire inner region of the bow shock (including the coma) is positively charged, this will encourage the break-up of a meteor, and for two reasons. First, the absence of valence electrons weakens the crystal lattice holding the bolide together. Second, electrostatic repulsion will create an internal pressure that will push the pieces apart.
seasmith
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
A Coulomb explosion is a mechanism for coupling electronic excitation energy from intense electromagnetic fields into atomic motion. The Coulombic repulsion of particles having the same electric charge can break the bonds that hold solids together.
With their low mass, outer valence electrons responsible for chemical bonding are easily stripped from atoms, leaving them positively charged. Given a mutually repulsive state between atoms whose chemical bonds are broken, the material explodes into a small plasma cloud of energetic ions with higher velocities than seen in thermal emission.[1]
wiki
Eldie_Essay
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Here are some screen captures of that fourth video I mentioned above, showing a meteor to ground and ground to meteor connection:
I have also found even more videos that show this connection. I may make some more screen captures of these other videos and post them later on.
One-Kilo Meteorite Fragment Found by Staff Writers Yekaterinburg (RIA Novosti) Feb 26, 2013
One-Kilo Meteorite Fragment Found. Image courtesy Russian Academy of Sciences. Scientists from Russia's Urals Federal University have discovered a meteorite fragment weighing more than one kilogram (2.2 lbs), the largest found so far from the meteorite strike that hit the Urals region on February 15, University expedition chief Viktor Grokhovsky said on Monday.
A total of more than 100 fragments have been found by the expedition along a 50 kilometer (30 mile) trail under the meteorite's flight path, he said.
Over 1,500 people were injured and thousands of buildings damaged when the massive meteorite streaked across the sky over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.
US space agency NASA estimates the meteorite was roughly 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter when it struck Earth's atmosphere, travelling several times the speed of sound, and exploded into a fireball brighter than the morning sun.
Fragments of the meteorite have been found in an eight-meter (25 feet) wide crater in the region's Lake Chebarkul, scientists said earlier this week.
kiwi
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Published on Feb 21, 2013 The recent explosion of a large meteor over Russia caused hundreds of injuries and considerable damage to local buildings—the most destructive such event in more than 100 years. The explosion has also raised new questions pointing directly to the behavior of large meteors in the Electric Universe.
Here is a simple experiment by a member of the Thunderbolts group, relating to the APPEARANCE of material ejected in the forward direction at 6:22 in this presentation: http://youtu.be/DUe7VTnHIXI
The experiment demonstrates some interesting optical effects of scratches on a transparent surface such as a windshield. A good reason to avoid shouting more exotic speculations as fact, something that has already occurred in Internet comments on the video segment. All fact-based interpretations of the clip, however, will be welcome.
For a relevant Thunderbolts Picture of the Day, see The Peekski
Published on Feb 21, 2013 The recent explosion of a large meteor over Russia caused hundreds of injuries and considerable damage to local buildings—the most destructive such event in more than 100 years. The explosion has also raised new questions pointing directly to the behavior of large meteors in the Electric Universe.
Here is a simple experiment by a member of the Thunderbolts group, relating to the APPEARANCE of material ejected in the forward direction at 6:22 in this presentation: http://youtu.be/DUe7VTnHIXI
The experiment demonstrates some interesting optical effects of scratches on a transparent surface such as a windshield. A good reason to avoid shouting more exotic speculations as fact, something that has already occurred in Internet comments on the video segment. All fact-based interpretations of the clip, however, will be welcome.
Sparky wrote: Just because you can not see a "trail" does not mean that there is none. It may have gone into dark mode. What disappointed me was not seeing an arc. Maybe there was one in the biggest flash. But most of the electrical discharge was in glow mode.
Yes, there is some lens flaring, but the ground fog moving up to meet the downward discharge, then obscuring objects after the discharge subsides, appears to be part of the electrical event.
If the only way you look at these videos is to pause, then you will miss a great deal of activity. Get an editor and stretch the timeline, to see the "boiling" action of the coma.
Sparky, you ought to check out http://youtu.be/yMs4sJMmJw8 with your editing software. At at 00:24-00:28, 01:57-01:58 and 02:27-02:28 there are three more videos of electrical connection, bringing the total in my count to seven. It would be great to have a single video with all these frames slowed down so people could see what we're talking about. I mean, I see the column, but I've yet to see the boiling 'cause I've just been pausing the videos.
I've also been bummed by only seeing glow mode discharge, but the connection videos are still very compelling evidence, in my opinion. My mind just can't wrap itself around all seven videos being mere lens flaring or artifacts. They all show the same thing, from different angles.
justcurious
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Charles.... I don't quite follow your logic.
First some definitions/naming conventions: sonic boom = the cone wave created by supersonic speed shockwave = the soundwave created by an explosion that breaks down doors and shatters windows (which might be caused by a sonic boom) bang = the sound of an explosion as we humans know it explosion = what looks like an explosion to normal people
In your writeup you suggest that the shockwave is due to an EMP (electromagnetic explosion). The theory goes like this, there is an EMP explosion which sends out EM waves, which upon reaching the observer transform themselves to mechanical energy and become audible and break stuff. I stated that the bang occurs after the explosive flash and hence the theory has a problem (since there is a delay between the flash and the bang, like in lightning). If I understand correctly from your responses, you were not referring to the bang, but rather some popping noises prior to the main event. However in your article all this EMP is supposed to be related to the meteor breakup (not some time before the breakup). Again, the bang came after the explosion/breakup. I really can't imagine how EM waves would transform themselves into mechanical waves just before reaching doors and windows to blast them out. Not to mention that this incredible transformational mechanism is only being guessed at ("observer localized transduction process", whatever that means).
The other options? The sonic boom. If there was a sonic boom/carpet caused by the meteor's supersonic speed in the atmosphere, it would have been heard in many places, perhaps a bit less loud at higher altitudes. I have not ruled it out yet, but if it was a sonic boom I would imagine that the damage would be less localised and be felt all along the meteor's trajectory once it was low enough in the atmosphere and the speed slowed. I haven't completely ruled out the sonic boom but it's almost out. Another option is that the meteor simply exploded and caused a shockwave, just like TNT or any other explosive. As far as I know the damage caused by explosives is mostly due to the shockwave, which are due to the rapid expansion and contraction of the surrounding air. Another option might have to do with a z-pinch effect. If the meteor is a rapidly moving charge, it should create a magnetic field around it according to the right hand rule, which could squeeze the ionized air (or charges released by the meteor) around the meteor, once the meteor discharges, the magnetic field would vanish and release all that mechanical tension (z-pinch effect), this is my own quack speculation amongst others. But maybe not that crazy as we can see in the sky clearly two smoke trails at the area of most intense activity (remnants of a Birkeland current pair?).
So far, I really like the coulomb explosion explanation. EMP and "electrophonic bolide", it sounds cool but probably completely off the mark. Meteoric "airbursts" no longer require speculations, and denying eyewitness accounts (due to them being too extraordinary). We got a real live one and on many cameras, we all saw how extraordinary these events can be. It cannot be denied.
CharlesChandler
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
justcurious wrote: In your writeup you suggest that the shockwave is due to an EMP (electromagnetic explosion).
Actually, I made the following statements.
CharlesChandler wrote: The sonic boom travels at the speed of sound. [...] On my webpage, when I'm talking about "popping" sounds that are coincident with the break-up of the meteor, that's a whole different phenomenon. [...] There is a sonic boom, but long before that hits, and coincident with the break-up of the meteor, people have heard much quieter sounds — little crackling noises. [...] But I didn't see any reports of this phenomenon in Chelyabinsk.
And EMP stands for "electromagnetic pulse". It doesn't necessarily mean that an explosion caused it, or that it will cause an explosion when it hits something.
justcurious wrote: The theory goes like this, there is an EMP explosion which sends out EM waves, which upon reaching the observer transform themselves to mechanical energy and become audible and break stuff.
No.
justcurious wrote: I stated that the bang occurs after the explosive flash and hence the theory has a problem (since there is a delay between the flash and the bang, like in lightning).
I should like to mention that I didn't do my write-up on bolides after the Chelyabinsk event, just to explain that one event. Rather, I did it before the Chelyabinsk event, to explain meteoric airbursts in general. My webpage explains phenomena that were not observed at Chelyabinsk, such as electrophonics. So you're thinking that it's just a "theory" that explains the bright flash, loud sound, and shockwave damage at Chelyabinsk. You see that I presented references from the scientific literature detailing the unmistakable evidence of EMPs from bolides. So you turn EMPs into explosive events, and then find a disconnect at Chelyabinsk. But there wasn't any reported evidence of an EMP at Chelyabinsk.
justcurious wrote: I really can't imagine how EM waves would transform themselves into mechanical waves just before reaching doors and windows to blast them out.
Neither can I. The "hissing" sounds that have been observed during other events are likely corona discharges. A "popping" sound could be a corona discharge, but too brief to qualify as a "hissing" sound. But there weren't any reports of such sounds at Chelyabinsk.
justcurious wrote: The other options? The sonic boom.
Yes.
justcurious wrote: Another option is that the meteor simply exploded and caused a shockwave, just like TNT or any other explosive.
The reason why I don't think that it was an "explosion" is that the smoke trail was many miles long. A sustained explosion is not what we would normally call an explosion. I think that it was an EM flare-up, as the charge separation mechanism failed. The bright light was from charge recombination, but this continued (irregularly) for over 10 seconds. Maybe the most intense brightening created a shockwave that would have contributed to the sonic boom (just from the speed of the bolide). But there were several brightenings, and in the videos, there was only one boom.
justcurious wrote: Another option might have to do with a z-pinch effect. If the meteor is a rapidly moving charge, it should create a magnetic field around it according to the right hand rule, which could squeeze the ionized air (or charges released by the meteor) around the meteor, once the meteor discharges, the magnetic field would vanish and release all that mechanical tension (z-pinch effect), this is my own quack speculation amongst others. But maybe not that crazy as we can see in the sky clearly two smoke trails at the area of most intense activity (remnants of a Birkeland current pair?).
How do you get two smoke trails from one z-pinching bolide?
I too find the symmetrical smoke trails to be telling... of something... I just don't know what that is. Have such smoke trails ever been recorded on video before? Is the symmetrical pair a common feature?
Interestingly, my original epiphany (as of 2013-01-15) on bolide break-up had an answer for this. The basic idea was that a bolide would start rolling really fast, since it has higher pressure air under it than over it, and the friction would induce rotation. A bolide only 17 meters across wouldn't encounter much of a density gradient from its top to its bottom, but the detached bow shock is bigger, so maybe there's something to this? Anyway, if the bolide is charged, and spinning really fast, then it's a dynamo, with a solenoidal field, where the axis is parallel to the surface of the Earth, and perpendicular to the direction of travel. (Imagine the wheel on a car. If it was charged, it would generate a field with the same alignment.) The epiphany was that this solenoidal magnetic field would direct an electric current into one pole and out of the other, and that perhaps an electric current right through the middle of the bolide would blow it apart. I didn't consider that to be a complete explanation, so I did a little research, and on 2013-01-18, I posted my new & improved model that calls it simply a Coulomb explosion due to the positive charging. But the "rolling electrodynamic meteor" model predicted that charge recombination would definitely occur at specific points on the bolide (i.e., the poles of the solenoidal field), and thus we would expect two trails of smoke, where the current burned into the bolide. Note that the current didn't blow the bolide apart, or there would have been a singular, spherical puff of smoke. Rather, it burned its way into it, and continued until the bolide broke up. So maybe there is a little bit of truth in both models. They aren't mutually exclusive. The charging mechanism is the inertial forces of nucleons burrowing into the detached bow shock, and the break-up is a Coulomb explosion. But the poloidal burning is due to the meteoric dynamo?
kiwi
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
So this is the official Podcast from David Talbot on the event ( posted up the page) ... I assume his assumption's still count for something around here? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ce6Pk_0TNE
CharlesChandler
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
@kiwi
Relax. Talbott says that bolides are electric. We're all saying that bolides are electric. I did a little research (see the references below), and found that a number of scientists are saying that bolides are electric. They also elaborate on how bolides are electric. Then we got to hypothesizing over stuff that Talbott has never addressed, such as the twin smoke trails.
Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse meeeeeeeeeeee...
Beech, M.; Foschini, L., 1999: A space charge model for electrophonic bursters. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 345: L27-L31
Beech, M.; Foschini, L., 2000: Leonid electrophonic bursters. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 367: 1056-1060
Grigoryev, V., 2002: The Vitim Bolide, 2002-09-25. Russian Academy of Sciences
Keay, C. S., 1980: Anomalous sounds from the entry of meteor fireballs. Science, 210: 11-15
Keay, C. S., 1993: Progress in Explaining the Mysterious Sounds Produced by Very Large Meteor Fireballs. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 7 (4): 337-354
Kim, H. D.; Setoguchi, T., 2007: Shock Induced Boundary Layer Separation. 8th International Symposium on Experimental and Computational Aerothermodynamics of Internal Flows, Lyon, France
May, H. D., 2008: A Pervasive Electric Field in the Heliosphere. IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, 36 (5): 2876-2879
Serezhkin, Y. G., 2000: Formation of ordered structures of charged microparticles in near-surface cometary gas-dusty atmosphere. Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference Series, 4137: 1-12
Wylie, C. C., 1932: Sounds from meteors. Popular Astronomy, 40: 289
Zel'dovich, Y. B.; Raizer, Y. P., 1967: Physics of Shock Waves and High-Temperature Hydrodynamic Phenomena. New York: Academic Press
webolife
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
I have witnessed two electrophonic meteors: 1. In late November, 1963, a large low-angle south bound fireball, viewed in clear sky over the Washington Cascades from the east at about 1:00 am — it hissed simultaneously with its traverse of the sky, a fact that many "experts" I reported this to denied as being impossible; I knew about the "lightning-thunder" delay and was perplexed about this experience for years, until learning of electrophonic meteors as an adult. 2. During the Perseid shower of 2008, seen from the Badlands of S.Dakota, I directly heard the "sputtering" of one meteor that flashed/discharged brighter and more colorfully than the average [larger? closer? lower?], out of about 50+ observed in a period of about 15 minutes just after midnight.
I saw/heard no evidence of electrophonics in the videos of the Chelyabinsk meteor, as also affirmed by Charles. but I am wondering about the statement that a sonic boom cannot cause the kind of damage seen in the Russian event... isn't it just a matter of degrees of magnitude between the level of a sonic boom and the type of sonic shock wave we witnessed via video?
The bolide's twin trail is concident with the extreme brightening witnessed from all viewpoints... the best explanation to me is that the meteor split into two nearly equal parts releasing a great deal of energy, but not "exploding" per se. The rain of meteorites along the surface beneath the trails seems to confirm that it split into many fragments in a period of just a couple of seconds.
The simulation video of windshield glare confirms my suspicion that the oversaturating brightening was an optical effect, rather than a ground-bolide discharge. And the reflection of the flash off the ground may have brightened/re-reflected from some of the air molecules above.
Lloyd
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Web said: I am wondering about the statement that a sonic boom cannot cause the kind of damage seen in the Russian event... isn't it just a matter of degrees of magnitude between the level of a sonic boom and the type of sonic shock wave we witnessed via video?
Web, I think you misunderstood Charles. He did attribute the recent breaking glass in Russia to the sonic boom there. He had earlier said: Certainly the Tunguska event was an explosion, since a sonic boom simply isn't going to knock down millions of trees. Got that now? They can break glass, but not knock down healthy trees.
Also, at high altitudes, the air is thinner, so the pressure gradient isn't as steep, reducing the effect.
justcurious wrote:I'm not sure that "explosion" is the right word here. Certainly the Tunguska event was an explosion, since a sonic boom simply isn't going to knock down millions of trees. So that one was definitely an explosion. Most other meteors don't really explode — they just sorta break up into lotsa pieces. The reason why I don't think that the Chelyabinsk bolide "exploded" is just that the smoke trail is sustained over many miles, not a single spherical puff from an instantaneous explosion. So I think that this was a break-up, with a flare due to charge recombination.Have such smoke trails ever been recorded on video before? Is the symmetrical pair a common feature?
