Yes, he survived the meteorite hit, but there’s no way that it was going that fast when it hit him:
This 14-year-old boy is Gerrit Blank, and he is probably smiling because he survived a 30,000 mph meteorite hit.
This is annoying, and misleading. Julie Banderas was discussing this on the Fox Report last night, as well, and it’s clear that everyone in the media believes that the object was going that fast when it hit him.
But that was its speed prior to entering the atmosphere, not at the end of its trajectory. Much of it was burned up, and the bit that remained was slowed tremendously from air drag by the time it got down to ground level. It might even have been at terminal velocity by that point, depending on how much energy it lost, which would probably only be a few hundred feet per second at most (depending on the density and size). If it had really been going that fast when it hit him, it would have been a kinetic-energy bomb, and blown his hand off, if not his arm and destroying the rest of his body. Anyway, there’s no way for anyone to know how fast it was really going, though one could make a crude guess if they had the piece and looked at the nature of the injury.
Maybe the meteorite carried super human traits that were transferred to the boy at the moment of impact. He’s smiling at Julie, because now he knows he can make journalist his secret identity to get close to her.
MV^2… I was thinking they must be using a microscope to see it (I never heard them mention how big it was)… or they were wrong.
One half em vee squared, actually. But it’s still a lot of energy.
Reportedly it buried itself in the road after hitting him. Presumably one could look at how deeply and calculate speed on impact from that.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress had a similar problem.
Also, I saw reports of it leaving a “smoldering hole”, as if the object was hot enough to start a fire. Fact is, most meteorites are still frozen except for a few millimeter thick crust that was exposed to the air.
If the news account is accurate, the meteorite was still supersonic when it hit.
If the news account is accurate, the meteorite was still supersonic when it hit.
That could very well be, if it hadn’t had time to reach terminal velocity. Bullets are supersonic, after all. But it was no 30,000 mph.
There was no need for FOX to embroider the story by iffy reporting on the speed of the object. Being struck by a meteorite is sufficiently newsworthy. I can recall seeing a photo of just one other person who had that experience, a woman struck while in bed inside her home. She exhibited serious widespread bruising.
Well, I seem to recall some “off” figures in reporting about the Columbia back in ’03, like it was traveling x number times the speed of light.
Seriously, expecting accuracy from a news outlet? Are people nuts?
Thanks for the reminder Rand. My swiss cheese memory doesn’t remember my college physics or calculus too well after 30 years.