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N0KFQ > TODAY 09.10.11 20:39l 52 Lines 2490 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Oct 9
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KB0WSA
Sent: 111009/1831Z 12634@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.0.4
Oct 9, 1992:
Meteorite crashes into Chevy Malibu
On this day in 1992, 18-year-old Michelle Knapp is watching
television in her parents' living room in Peekskill, New York
when she hears a thunderous crash in the driveway. Alarmed, Knapp
ran outside to investigate. What she found was startling, to say
the least: a sizeable hole in the rear end of her car, an orange
1980 Chevy Malibu; a matching hole in the gravel driveway
underneath the car; and in the hole, the culprit: what looked
like an ordinary, bowling-ball-sized rock. It was extremely heavy
for its size (it weighed about 28 pounds), shaped like a football
and warm to the touch; also, it smelled vaguely of rotten eggs.
The next day, a curator from the American Museum of Natural
History in New York City confirmed that the object was a genuine
meteorite.
Scientists estimate that the Earth is bombarded with about 100
pounds of meteoric material every day. Meteorites are pieces of
asteroids and other debris made of rock, iron and nickel that
have been orbiting in space for billions of years. Some are as
tiny as dust particles and others are as huge as 10 miles across;
most, however, are about the size of a baseball. Astronomers and
other people who pay attention to the night sky can easily see
them: When a meteorite enters the Earth's atmosphere, it blazes
across the sky like a fireball. (What most people call "shooting
stars" are actually meteorites.) Thousands of people in the
eastern United States saw the greenish Peekskill meteorite as it
streaked toward Knapp's Malibu and many heard it too: one witness
said that it crackled like a very loud sparkler. Scientists have
determined that it came from the inner edge of the main asteroid
belt in space, between Jupiter and Mars.
While meteorites are fairly common, a meteorite hitting a car is
not: A car is, after all, a very small object on a very large
planet. In fact, as far as scientists know it has only happened
twice before--once in Illinois during the 1930s and once in St.
Louis. Eventually, the famous Knapp meteorite was sold to a
collector and two fossil dealers, who broke it into smaller
chunks and sold those to a handful of other collectors and
museums. The car, meanwhile, sold for $10,000 to Lang's Fossils
and Meteorites in Cranford, New Jersey. It has been on display in
New York, Paris, Munich and Tokyo.
73, K.O. n0kfq
Another old retired guy
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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