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PORT ANGELES – There was something different about the meteorites that fell in the National Marine Sanctuary of the Olympic Coast on March 7, suspects a NASA scientist
Marc Fries, curator of cosmic dust. Exploded in a supersonic fireball with pieces plunging into the Pacific Ocean was probably "mechanically difficult" because of the way it broke.
"Weird fall," said Fries. "Great Fall, Fragmented in an Unusual Model."
Through a potentially groundbreaking discovery on the Nautilus exploration vessel, Fries will test his hypothesis in a lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
"We found a few things that I believe Fries said in a presentation at Peninsula College on Thursday.
Using a pair of underwater robots, the crew of Nautilus crossed a section of the bottom on Monday. Fries uses the weather radar from the March 7th National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which painted the column of rock fragments and a computer model to predict that more large meteorites landed about 25.5 miles from the Quinault Reserve about 330 feet from
Although we did not find large pieces in the soft and thick mud, samples of Seabed sediments revealed two suspected meteorites of about four millimeters in diameter, h of tiny droplets of presumed melting crust that formed when the meteoroid was slammed. in the & # 39; atmosphere at 19:05 on March 7..
"I think it might well be a meteorite – a small one," said Fries by showing a slide of one of the samples.
"We'll see this thing open, look inside, and we'll be able to tell from the bulk chemistry of the mineralogical and isotopic analyzes of this if this is just something from the seabed, or if it came from meteorites. "
Fries said it would take" a few weeks "to determine if the samples come from space.
If the material is confirmed as being meteoric, Fries and the crew of Nautilus will have been the first to find space rocks that crashed into an ocean. The fireball that produced a shock wave and lit up the sky above Grays Harbor County on March 7 was the largest meteor reported on the United States since the weather radar came online in the 1990s, says fries.
"It's the largest and most massive meteorite fall of all the ones I've shown you," Fries told a crowd of nearly 100 people at Keegan Hall. Fries estimates that two tons of meteorites fell in the sanctuary and sank in the seabed four months ago.
The Nautilus was already planned to be in the sanctuary. When the eight-hour poll took place on Monday.
Jenny Waddell, research coordinator of the National Marine Sanctuary of the Olympic Coast, contacted cosmic scientists to launch a meteorological survey on the Nautilus, coordinator of education and outreach at the Jacquelin Shrine. e Laverdure said.
The Nautilus is operated by the non-profit Ocean Exploration Trust. His underwater readings are posted in real time on www.nautiluslive.org
Fries hypothesized that the March 7 meteorite was mechanically difficult because of the large number of large fragments that survived the ball of fire compared to the number of small fragments appeared on the Doppler radar.
After the fireball, it takes about 10 minutes for the meteorites to fall about 20 kilometers (65,617 feet) from the ground or into a body of water. The smaller the fragment, the more sensitive it is to wind
"The biggest thing to show on the radar was 4.4 kilograms (9.7 pounds)," Fries said.
"There are probably larger ones in the water well, almost certainly."
The chips used to be around a small ordinary chondrite, the most common type of meteorite. Ordinary chondrites formed when the internal solar system was a disk of particles and cosmic dust about 4.5 billion years ago, says Fries.
In February 2013, about 1200 Russians were injured by a shock wave caused by the Chelyabinsk meteor. Most of these injuries came from flying glass.
"If a meteorite hits a building, it goes through it like butter," says Fries, while up to 20 meteorite falls are discovered all over the world.
A woman from Alabama was injured in 1954 when a meteorite smashed her radio, bounced around her living room and hit her on the hip
. she killed her directly, she would have killed her. "
A boy in Africa was not hurt when he heard the sound of falling debris, looked up and was hit by a meteorite the size of a fingernail." Fries says "As far as we know, no one has ever been touched by one," said Fries.
Fries encouraged viewers to use available technology to chase meteorites online.
are available on You Tube and on the website of the American Meteor Society, www.amsm Once you know when and where a meteor has occurred, shoot the corresponding radar images from the NOAA NEXRAD to find signs of Rockfall, Fries suggests.
The 90-minute presentation was part of the Peninsula College's monthly STEMinar, a series of scientific conferences co-organized by NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary of the Olympic Coast [19659002] ________
One can join the reporter Rob Ollikainen at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or [email protected].
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