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stardust vs bulldust
Once again, the media have been duped and the public sold a story that sounds good, but is a load of c#@p . Any astro buff (so I am into meteorites) knows that a meteorite the size of a pea will have lost all of its cosmic velocity typically 10 miles above the surface and hits the ground at terminal velocity of up to about 220 m/sec . An object this small would probably have the same terminal velocity of a decent sized hailstrone and be unlikely to cause a 30 cm crater. A gash I could believe, but the crater is pure bulls%#t . Once again, as anyone should know, it takes an impactor impacting at a cosmic velocity in excess of 5km/sec to cause a crater 8 times the diameter of the impactor - caused by the vapour pressure of the instantaneous conversion of kinetic energy into thermal energy. It is too early in the morning to do the mathematics, but a quick calculation yields that the force is equivalent to hitting a cricket ball 20 metres- enough to be caught and bowled . q.i.d.
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