Ok,
So impact weight is 4000.00 lbs. 4 X,s the Russian one was.
From 5 miles away, do I feal it through my feet first or through air movement??
Later,
Jaxon…
Help me out. . .
Estimated size was about 50 feet.
If it was somewhat roundish, and with a density similar to sand (~100 lbs/ft[sup]3[/sup]), the estimated weight would have been about 1.3 million pounds.
Where did 4000 lbs come from?
I think he’s referring to the fragment that hit the lake and got fished out last week.
In which case the witness may be still too stunned by the overhead flash to pay attention to something hitting a lake 5 miles away.
Exactly,
Later,
Jaxon…
If all you are talking about is a shock wave, that will travel at the speed of sound. The speed of sound through earth is significantly faster than the speed of sound through air, so if something happened five miles away you would feel it through your feet before you felt it through the air.
Meteors don’t travel at the same speed all the way into the ground though. What they typically do is enter the atmosphere at a very high speed then slow down significantly due to the friction of the meteor’s collision with all of those air molecules.
That big window-shattering kaboom doesn’t come from impact with the ground. It comes from impact with the air. The meteor will often break up into fragments and those fragments may actually be falling at subsonic speeds by the time they finally reach the ground.
So for most meteors, you’ll feel the shock wave through the air before you’ll feel the impact with the ground through your feet, if you even feel the latter at all.