Moolybdenum?
Cowcium.
That would certainly explain how the fire spread so fast at first; an incandescent cow impacting at that speed would make a splash of flaming debris a couple-few blocks in radius. And once that much of the city was alight, the fire service of the day stood no chance.
The Dearborn Observatory held the largest telescope in the country at the time, so the observational data should have been excellent. Suspiciously, “the records of the Chicago Astronomical Society were destroyed in the great fire of 1871”, caused by none other than the inbound bovine missile.
The Great Chicago Fire, the Great Michigan Fire, the Peshtigo Fire, and several others occurred on the same date. Some fringe enthusiasts claim that they must have been started by fragments of Biela’s Comet. (Sadly, they were more likely caused by mundane fires and dry weather.)
I had it on good authority that this was a massless, frictionless cow.
a Moo-on Neutrino maybe?
But it jumped off the Earth at escape velocity. She didn’t land on the Moon, so can’t jump off.
Off on a slight tangent, Scott Manley just posted a good video explaining the fundamentals of why reentry heating is pretty much impossible to avoid:
You forgot Poland spherical
A cow-neutrino! I knew they could oscillate between states, but jumping over the moon is new to me.
Okay, I was waiting for someone else to post it, and deferring to the fact that this IS Factual Questions, but I think we’ve moved far enough, and if I go down, I’ll be going down with half the other posters.
What this thought experiment needs, is MORE COWBELL!
Stramger?