Skydiver narrowly missed by meteorite

i didn't see anything?

 

This is exactly why I buy lottery tickets.
People can say the odds make playing ridiculous.

But this guy....almost got hit by a meteorite while sky diving! Shove a leprechaun in his pocket or have him land next to big foot and we have the triple crown of beating the odds.

I think the universe likes to beat the odds. Somewhere the thumb of intelligent design is taking aim at a Norwegian Sky Diver...oops..missed....

Well I'm glad nobody was hurt. Almost as amazing that it was caught on video.

 

should've caught it!

 

Is there anyone who understands Norwegian and can translate the audio into English for us?

 

...well we have do have a new Norwegian Prius owner in the Newbee section I think...let's put him to work

 

I'm use to a meteorite moving fast enough to leave a trail and vastly faster than what can be captured as a clear image. Exactly what is the reason it is called a meteorite instead of a rock thrown from a plane?

 

That is what I was thinking... that thing should be blazing with a contrail trailing it.

 

Party Pooper.

A rock thrown from a plane is far less exciting.

 

The tiny ones regularly hitting the planet will eventually slow down to the point of not burning up. Otherwise, I'd think there would be more fires started by them.

That said, I don't think we can 100% say it wasn't something that fell from or off the plane.

 

The blazing contrail stage occurs at far far higher altitudes than any airplanes fly or humans jump, even Felix Baumgartner. Even much larger rocks should cool to darkness and slow to subsonic speeds before dropping to normal flying and parachuting altitudes.

But this is still crazy enough to demand more evidence.

 

It was moving much too slow to be a meteorite.

SCH-I535

 

Well I learned all I know about meteorites from watching made for the Sci-Fi Channel movies.

Which means I know Meteorites always glow slightly, jet to earth as extreme speed, leave a trail, and crash to earth leaving steaming craters filled with:

A: A glowing substance that when touched will turn you into a Zombie and/or a substance that will grow in size and eventually kill almost everyone in the nearby rural town.

B: Aliens bent on making the earth their own/Monsters that evidently don't like being here.

C: *Babies from doomed planets sent here by desperate parents. Bonus points if our Yellow Sun gives them more power than a locomotive.

* Technically this is not a meteorite but a rocket ship that will be mistaken for a meteorite. Another truth is a lot of things that aren't really meteorites get mistaken for meteorites. ***This may be the case here. I'm guessing a suicidal Pet Rock that stowed away aboard the jump plane.

 

Unless it is a HUGE meteor, it will have slowed to its terminal velocity before it falls to a skydiver's altitude. Its speed will be essentially the same as if it had been dropped from an airplane.

 

This is nonsense. Where did you hear this?

 

You can find it many places on the web. I first read it decades ago in multiple astronomy texts.

Have you seen the altitude estimates of the many videotaped fireballs? They blaze and burn out or break up far far above commercial aviation altitudes. Try reading spaceweather.com for a while, some details occasionally get reported there.

My sister witnessed the Great Daylight Fireball of 1972, but the trail had vanished before she could get back to the ranch house and tell the rest of us about it. I remember plenty of news reports of airline pilots seeing it and pointing to where it 'landed'. Their reports were a scattered mess. Later analysis from satellite observations determined that it just grazed the atmosphere, exiting and returning to space without fully burning up. Its lowest altitude was 53 kilometers.

P.S. Just in case you can't find any links yourself, here are a few seeds:
Meteoroid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
How to Identify a Meteorite -- Step 2
// UW - Madison GEOLOGY MUSEUM \\
Fireballs and Meteorite Falls | International Meteor Organization
Fireball FAQs | American Meteor Society

 

I agree with fuzzy. Look up wiki. Meteors with streak of lights are visible between 47-75 miles above the surface. Airplanes cruises at 5.5-7.5 miles above. Typical skydivers without breathing apparatus is just a little over 2 miles above. A meteor would have slowed down to terminal velocity of a few hundred MPH due to thicker atmosphere

 

I was not thinking contrail so much as smoke or dust trail. To get to terminal velocity it had to expend a lot of friction slowing down. If it was primarily iron it should have been hot, hot, hot. If it was rock, it likely should have been dust at that point. But lacking more details, I cannot say.