Here is a video of a meteor which was spotted over the midwest recently.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/meteor-spotted-over-the-midwest/vi-AAmFjSm?OCID=ansmsnnews11
My question is: about how large was the rock? I would think as it entered the atmosphere its size would begin to diminish very quickly as it burned but it there any way to know about how big it was to begin with? I have heard some say they are mere pebbles that burn very quickly. I have heard some say they are enormous.
What do the dopers say?
Certainly not enormous. The one that did all the damage in Russia a few years ago, which was estimated to have released 20x the energy of the first Atomic bomb, was thought to be house-sized.
A small bolide like the one in the video might be “bigger than a breadbox.”
The typical meteor in a meteor shower is sand-grain sized, more or less.
The one from last night? Probably not bigger than a breadbox.
Bob Bonadure, the director of the Milwaukee Public Planetarium, suggests in this article that the meteor was about the size of a basketball (~24 cm in diameter) and composed primarily of nickel.
http://fox6now.com/2017/02/06/meteor-spotted-over-wisconsin-early-monday-morning/
Ha!
(Actually, I’m seeing a breaking update–it was the ISS’s breadbox. They are apologizing for the bother.)
This classic footage is believed to be that of a car-sized asteroid which passed through the earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of about 40 miles.
A few years later, we were watching a TV show about UFOs, which were a big thing at the time, and this was shown while the commentator made a reference to weather balloons. My dad said, "That's not a weather balloon." No, it wasn't, and it wasn't a UFO either. Had it collided with the earth, it might have taken out a city or caused a huge tsunami. :eek: