Good Morning Listees,
Hope everyone had a great week last week. I've had a great time this
past week, and have received a large number of emails and phone calls
from friends in this community congratulating me on creating the
Meteorite Wiki. I'd like to say thank you very much for all the kind
words, advice and suggestions for the site, I do appreciate all of it.
But I find it kind of weird to receive these kind words on something
that should have been created long ago. Why it wasn't I have no idea as
it's something that is greatly needed by the meteorite world, and now
the main stream.
With increasing awareness of meteorite falls, fireballs, asteroids,
including the mighty mid-air explosions over Indonesia, and even a few
hoaxes as the media spins more and more fantastic tales about asteroids,
meteorites and meteors it's more important than ever to provide an
information source that will help educate the public about meteorites,
the events that surround them and the science behind them.
This is especially important given the massive media attention and the
inaccurate data being reported. That is a huge problem in and of itself.
Poor reporting by lazy reporters and skewed data are constant problems.
On a more positive note, we can be happy about the millions of viewers
that the new and exciting Meteorite Men cable television series on the
Science Channel will garner. A lot of these people will become
fascinated by them, and hopefully will be amazed enough to research more
information on them. The show I think will create a whole new group of
meteorite collectors and hunters through the ingenious adventure/science
theme of the show, and most likely will add a few new scientists to the
meteorite world as well. To be able to entertain and educate at the same
time about the coolest rocks on the face of the planet has to rank up
there. It doesn't get much more exciting than that.
Meteorites will continue to grow in popularity as awareness increases.
Millions of people will watch the show yes, and millions more will watch
the new movie by director Roland Emmerich called 2012.
Most are familiar with the ominous 2012 date from the Mayan calendar
because the calendar inexplicably ends on the date of December 21 2012,
which some believe marks the end of the world. Some believe that it
foretells of the future impact of a massive asteroid with the Earth in
which all life will be extinguished in a huge ball of fire wiping out
all living creatures and human beings in the process.
Thanks to Roland Emmerich's new 2012 movie and the countless millions of
people and websites surrounding this event, the date is now etched in
the minds of hundreds of millions of people across the globe, and the
closer we get to this date, the more interest in asteroids there will
be, and in turn the more interest there will be in meteorites!
Given the recent 50 kiloton explosion (equivalent to 110 million pounds
of TNT explosives) of an untracked and very scientifically surprising
asteroid over Indonesia just a few weeks ago, this proves there's more
out there than we can possibly track and raises some alarm as well.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news165.html
Many scientists were taken by surprise and were amazed at the force and
size of the mid-air explosion. It's been reported that no one knew it
existed until it exploded over land scaring thousands of locals and
setting off infrasound detection systems thousands of miles away.
I can't really mention all this without mentioning NASAs new Asteroid
Watch program http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch/ and of course the
NEO (Near Earth Object Program) http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ both of which
track, record and notify interested parties of the potential hazards of
the extraterrestrial visitors we lovingly know as asteroids. Many of
NASAs program participants and scientists are ever more aware of the
social networking craze that has taken the internet world by storm, and
have implemented and created their own social network accounts on
Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and other popular websites.
This revolution of online networking has allowed the worlds best
advertising system (word of mouth) to become electronic in nature
spreading the word around the world in a matter of seconds! Combine that
with cell phones, PDAs, and broadband enabled laptops and other mobile
computing technology you can see the power and importance of having the
right information available to those who search for it.
So the next time there's a large fireball event, a meteorite fall, or
when NASA discovers a new asteroid impactor or scientists find, track
and predict an impact like that of Asteroid 2008 TC3, there will be a
source of information and knowledge readily available for the curious,
for the educator, and for the media to compile accurate data for their
reports.
We'll have an informational database for the worlds meteorite knowledge
created by the people for the people and to educate the people about
those rocks we love so much.
I hope you will take part in the new Meteorite Wiki and help share the
science and knowledge of meteorites with the world!
Regards,
Eric Wichman
Meteorites USA
Founder
The Meteorite Wiki
www.MeteoriteWiki.com
P.S. There's been many more pages created on the wiki so far, and all of
them are open for editing and article contribution. If you are an
educator, scientist, and/or an expert in your field of study and feel
there needs to be a page article dedicated to a certain topic you're
invited to create a Meteorite Wiki account and contribute your work. You
are welcome to include a credit/by line and date if you wish, and link
to any reference and relevant links to an "External Links" section at
the bottom of the page article.
Here's a short list of pages that either have been created already or
are being created now.
http://www.meteoritewiki.com/index.php/Special:AllPages
If you can think of a topic that needs to be covered, by all means drop
me an email, sign up and create it!
Enjoy...
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