Meteorite strike in Latvia

[Dutch90]

A fiery object struck farmland creating a large crater near a small town in northern Latvia.

No-one was injured in the incident and geologists are now studying the object, which may be a meteorite.

Locals claimed the object fell near a farmhouse on the outskirts of Mazsalaca town in the district of Valmiera last night. It created a crater which measured 50 feet across and 16 feet deep.A witness who claimed to have seen the incident described the 'meteorite' as making a noise similar to the one of an aircraft flying at a low altitude.

ldis Nulle, a scientist at the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Center, said there was smoke coming out of the crater when he arrived at the crash site late Sunday in the Mazsalaca region near the Estonian border.
'My first impression is that, yes, it was a meteorite,' he said. 'All the evidence suggests this when compared to pictures of real meteorite craters.'

He said the rim of the crater was slightly raised and there was a black-grayish scar at the bottom - both signs of a meteorite impact.
Experts outside Latvia said it was unusual for such a large meteorite to hit the Earth. The planet is constantly bombarded with objects from outer space, but most burn up in the atmosphere and never reach the surface.
In 2007, a meteorite crashed near Lake Titicaca in Peru, causing a crater about 40 feet (12 metres) wide and 15 feet (5 metres) deep.

Asta Pellinen-Wannberg, a meteorite expert at the Swedish Institute of Space Research, said she didn't know the details of the Latvian incident, but that a rock would have to be at least three feet (one metre) in diameter to create a hole that size.
Henning Haack, a lecturer at Copenhagen University's Geological Museum said more information was needed to confirm that the crater was indeed caused by a meteorite.

'With all these kind of reports we get there always is a pretty large margin of error,' he said.
In Latvia, Nulle said a group of experts would examine the crater today and bring rock samples back to the capital, Riga, for testing.
Nulle rushed to the site after people in the area reported seeing a fiery object falling from the sky.
Inga Vetere of the Fire and Rescue Service said a military unit has tested the site and found that radiation levels are normal. There were no injures.
She said police have cordoned off the area to prevent souvenir hunters from taking away the soil.

'We are not finally sure that this is a meteorite,'  she told Itar-Tass news agency. 'Eyewitnesses said something fell from the sky and fire started.'
Russian blogs posted YouTube video that claimed to show the remains of the meteor burning brightly shortly after the crash, but the validity of the video has not yet been confirmed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1222990/Fiery-meteor-creates-50-foot-crater-Latvian-countryside.html

The YouTube video can be viewed on the site. Looks real to me!

[deezelboy]

Should it be burning like that?

[Dutch90]

Should it be burning like that?

Maybe the meteorite itself isn't burning, but it's so hot from atmospheric friction and the impact itself that anything that comes in contact with it will.

Why shouldn't it be burning, anyway?

[Neltharion]

The meteorite is smoking because as Dutch suggested the atmospheric friction would cause it to heat up to very high temperatures so any material on it will start to smoke and smolder.

Of course that material would have to be not of the asteroid but something that landed on it after. I think

[deezelboy]

Why shouldn't it be burning, anyway?

Meteorites don't generally land particuarly hot.  Atmospheric friction causes them to decelerate, and thus they start to cool in flight.  If you look at the Space Shuttle, it gets hot when it enters the atmosphere, but by the time it's landed it's no longer glowing.

[Dutch90]

Okay, forget all that:

Scientists investigating a large crater initially believed to have been caused by a meteorite said a closer analysis today revealed it was a hoax.
Experts in the Baltic country rushed to the site after reports that a metorite-like object had crashed late last night in the Mazsalaca region near the Estonian border.

'This is not a real crater. It is artificial,' Uldis Nulle, a scientist at the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Center, said after inspecting the site today.

Earlier Uldis had said his first impression late last night was that the crater had been caused by a meteorite. He said there was smoke coming out of the hole when he arrived.

But on seeing the hole in daylight today, he and several other scientists changed they mind.

They said it was too tidy to have been caused by a meteorite.
'It's artificial, dug by shovel,' said Girts Stinkulis, a geologist at the University of Latvia.

Dainis Ozols, a nature conservationist, said he believes someone dug the hole and tried to make it look like a meteorite crater by burning some pyrotechnic compound at the bottom. He added he would analyse some samples taken from the site.

Sigita Pildava, a spokeswoman for the State Police, said it wasn't immediately clear whether police would open an investigation into the hoax.
Inga Vetere of the Fire and Rescue Service said they received a call about the alleged meteorite on Sunday evening from an eyewitness. She said a military unit was dispatched to the site and found that radiation levels were normal.
Experts outside Latvia said it would be unusual for such a large meteorite to hit the Earth. The planet is constantly bombarded with objects from outer space, but most burn up in the atmosphere and never reach the surface.

In 2007, a meteorite crashed near Lake Titicaca in Peru, causing a crater about 40 feet (12 meters) wide and 15 feet (five meters) deep.

Asta Pellinen-Wannberg, a meteorite expert at the Swedish Institute of Space Research, said she didn't know the details of the Latvian incident, but that a rock would have to be at least three feet (one meter) in diameter to create a hole that size.

Henning Haack, a lecturer at Copenhagen University's Geological Museum, said when it comes to alleged meteorite crashes, 'there always is a pretty large margin of error.'

This has replaced the earlier contents of the link I posted.

In retrospect I must admit the crater looked a bit too nice and clean. I do wonder who'd want to invest so much time and money to a mere hoax.

Meteorites don't generally land particuarly hot.  Atmospheric friction causes them to decelerate, and thus they start to cool in flight.  If you look at the Space Shuttle, it gets hot when it enters the atmosphere, but by the time it's landed it's no longer glowing.

What about the impact? There's generally a fiery explosion, no? Or is that just Hollywood?

[deezelboy]

If it's big and/or fast enough, yeah, you'll get a fireball  - it'll be much like a nuke going off.

[Dutch90]

If it's big and/or fast enough, yeah, you'll get a fireball  - it'll be much like a nuke going off.

So couldn't the meteorite be burning after that?

[deezelboy]

Not really, it would've most likely have been vapourised at impact if it was travelling with enough kinetic energy to create a fireball.  The crater and the surrounding area would be burning, though. 

Although in order to do this amount of damage, it would have needed a much larger impact than the one that was supposed to have taken place in Latvia.

[Dutch90]

Not really, it would've most likely have been vapourised at impact if it was travelling with enough kinetic energy to create a fireball.  The crater and the surrounding area would be burning, though. 

Okay, I thought it was something like that.

Too bad this was a hoax, would've been really cool if it had been for real. I remember a meteorite being tracked over Somalia earlier this year, but I'm not sure they ever found any remains or an impact crater.

[deezelboy]

If it's any consolation, there was a meteorite that exploded in the air at the beginning of October over Indonesia.  Exploded with a force of 50kt, but fortunately was around 20km up so nobody was hurt.  Witnesses heard the bang and there was a pretty spectacular dust trail.

The Somalia one - if this was the one they tracked late last year, it exploded over Sudan, I think, and they were able to recover fragments of it.