This asshole already has a thread, so I won’t start my own to continue this. Tl;dr, someone makes a minor mistake saying “meteor” when they meant “meteorite”. I corrected it (not rudely) for the sake of factual accuracy. Then this fuckwit thought that he was being clever by googling for a list of definitions and attempting to make a “gotcha” snipe at me which he did not get correct. And the Dunning-Keuger nitwit is so stupid and so stubborn that he still thinks that he’s got me with his degree from Google University. Puzzlegal asked us to drop this in the main thread, but I don’t want the latest spewed ignorance to remain unaddressed.
“Not all meteorites are asteroid in nature. Some are meteoroid. Had you looked this up as I suggested, you’d know this.”
Not all meteorites are asteroid in nature. Some are from Mars or the Moon. A very rare few might possibly be from comets, such as Tagish Lake. However, the vast majority of meteorites are from asteroids. “Meteoroid” is simply a label given to a specific size classification of object in space. You nitwit.
“Nobody ever says “an asteroid fell to earth”, or “this is the site of an asteroid impact”. Do you ever go to the rock shop and say “show me your asteroid section?” No. It’s meteorites. Aways meteorites. Nobody ever calls it anything else. You know this.”
In the objects in the scale of this discussion—ones big enough to form gold deposits—people always say it is the site of an asteroid impact and that an asteroid fell to Earth. Meteorites are specifically the solid, visible recovered stones that were large enough to make it to the surface but not so large that they utterly vaporized on impact.
“Look, you were pedantic enough to bust somebody’s chops over “meteor” not being close enough to “meteorite”. There’s some SDMB rule that states that your correction must contain an error, and that someone else must point it out. The proper protocol is that you good-naturedly have a laugh at your own expense, you don’t double down on something that could easily be resolved with 5 seconds of googling.”
I wasn’t “busting someone’s chops”, I was correcting a minor error in the attempt at fighting ignorance. I have been a meteorite collector for over 20 years and am active in the meteorite community. The extent of your knowledge, however, is obviously limited to your 5 seconds of Googling looking for a gotcha.
This is one of the frustrating things about being knowledgeable about a subject on the internet. You provide hopefully helpful information, but then you have to fight against some know-nothing asshole with a google search who spreads his worthless, ignorant horseshit and attempts to undercut anything you do. You try to fight ignorance, ignorance fights back.
For evidence of my “street cred” on meteorite related material, I submit a couple of photos of meteorites in my collection that are included in the authoratative, academic meteorite database, and have been there for 14 years:
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/MetBullFindphoto.php?credit=Darren+Garrison
What do you have to submit, you ignorant blowhard dipshit?