On another topic, S. Ray DeRusse opined: > We realized the level of absurdity from you and many others when > you endlessly debated whether a meteorite fall is hot to the touch > back in 2002. You guys endlessly debated this issue and some trained > scientists even weighed in on the issue but only served to cloud it. > Since ya'll never settled it let me tell you the heat generated by > a meteorite fall is proportional to the metal content.
Incorrect. Generated heat has little to do with the meteoroid composition. > That is to say the higher the metal content the hotter to the > touch.....duh. This is a different claim and a misleading statement since it doesn't address the question of ~why~ a meteorite with higher metal content would be warmer to the touch (a statement which isn't true, by the way, in all cases). Far more important than the metal content of a meteorite to its surface temperature (shortly after landing) is its volume. > That means that stony meteorites will only be warm to the > touch whereas iron-nickel meteorites will be hot. Small iron-nickel meteorites might be warm or even hot to the touch; larger ones will be significantly cooler. Stony meteorites are much more likely to be ice-cold than warm due to significant ablation. Cheers, Rob ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list