"The meteor probably weighed about 154,300 pounds" -- meteorites found in N Cal.

[Quiet_Dem_Mom]

Experts say the flaming meteor, dating to the early formation of the solar system 4 billion to 5 billion years ago, probably was about the size of a minivan when it entered the Earth's atmosphere with a loud boom early Sunday. It was seen from Sacramento, Calif., to Las Vegas and parts of Northern Nevada.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/sunday-s-fireball-larger-than-most-meteors-scientists-say-148927765.html

--Yea...a 154,000 pound minivan!

We live in Douglas County, NV (near South Lake Tahoe) and our kids were freaked out by the sonic boom that it caused right before 8 a.m. Sunday morning. They thought something hit the house! Sounds like there were also quite a few people in our area that actually witnessed the meteor streak across the sky.

Anybody else in the northern CA or NV area that heard the sonic boom Sunday morning?

[Rex]

1. Must be some incredibly dense material.

nt.

[ronnie624]

2. Mostly iron, probably. n/t

Actually, after reading the article, it is carbonaceous chondrite.

[Rex]

5. It is funky space metal!

Maybe make a cool sword outta it or something.

[ronnie624]

6. The article says carbonaceous chondrite. n/t

[Rex]

8. Wiki says that is a very rare kind of meteor.

only 4% of meteors that fall from the sky are these types. Very interesting.

[ronnie624]

33. I sure hope they don't get any bigger. n/t

[siligut]

22. OK, this made me laugh!

Definitely need to make a sword or something cool like that

[Posteritatis]

26. Hey, it worked for Terry Pratchett.. (nt)

[slackmaster]

4. It's like a big chunk of stainless steel

[Rex]

7. Wow.

Glad that didn't land on my foot...it might have hurt.

[Posteritatis]

24. I imagine a 75-tonne rock hitting me at mach 25 wouldn't hurt for long... (nt)

[ieoeja]

9. What makes you think it was a Conservative?

[Rex]

19. HA!

DUzy!

[Posteritatis]

23. A typical minivan's almost entirely empty space

If you took an ingot of iron the size of one you'd easily wind up with dozens of tonnes.

[Rex]

27. True but that would not equal 150k pounds.

I believe a C-130 weighs about 170k pounds. And is far bigger then a VW bus.

[Posteritatis]

28. I'm not sure you're getting how dense metals are

A C-130 is also almost entirely empty space, and is actually designed to be lighter than something that size would often be otherwise.

A block of iron one meter on each side weighs almost over 17,000 pounds. If you ballpark our hypothetical minivan at twentyish cubic meters, you're getting close to 350,000 pounds.

It's very, very easy for solid blocks of metal to get astonishingly heavy pretty quickly. People almost never deal with big chunks of bulk metal like that, so it's pretty easy to forget how much it weighs in large amounts.

[Rex]

29. True I have no idea or expertise in that area.

That is fascinating, thanks! Yeah, I guess I am not 'picturing' in my head accurately how dense and solid metals are. The comparison to a VW mini-van through me for a loop! So a sold chunk of metal the size of a minivan is about 175 tons...wow. Are there actually places that have huge solid chunks of metal like that? I guess maybe a dams superstructure would require something that size?

[Posteritatis]

31. Yeah, you have to start getting into that sort of scale for that amount of mass to make sense

Mostly, you're only going to see those sorts of scales when they're producing the stuff in bulk in the first place, though. Even dams would be more concrete than metal.

Past that, basically think in terms of the sorts of things people struggle with while weightlifting, and then picture what those would be like if they were solid and larger than a handful of refrigerators. The mass builds up very fast.

Iron's "light" as far as such things go, too - a minivan-sized chunk of gold would weigh about 400 tonnes.

[Rex]

32. Dam that is amazing...I bet a solid gold (and I mean solid)

mini-van would start to sink into the ground! Yeah...it is hard picturing the weight of 400 tonnes, I guess that is why my brain picked a big thing like a C-130 to compare it to.

It reminds me of when I was young and read how a white dwarf star has a mass that is so extreme that the gravity at the surface can be 100k that of the Earth!

Science, I don't understand a lot of it but I still find it very fascinating!

[Morning Dew]

3. a 154,000 pound minivan

would get really poor mileage.

[ProfessorGAC]

10. Not If You Dropped It From Space

It would hit several hundred miles per hour and use no gas at all!
GAC

[DemzRock]

11. Gravity fueled minivans FTW!

No gasoline needed!

[snooper2]

12. This is why the concept of god is ridiculous

I'm sure somebody will read this and think, oh Jesus and Allah were just playing kickball and it got away from them


Check out the stats on a white dwarf..

(1 tonne) (1000Kilograms) per cubic centimeter


Figure a minivan weighs around 2 tonne (2000 kilograms) imangine trying to hold 2 cubes the size of a cube of salt with that kind of mass in your hand.

I imagine that would fuck your wrist bone up

Of course Jesabus made it all

[Rex]

20. It really is silly when you think about it.

That a master creator carved the Universe into what we see today. REALLY?

Explain HOW.

[immoderate]

13. A minivan sized chunk of iron would weigh more than 300,000 pounds

Say the minivan is 5x2x2 meters. (Roughly 15x6x6 feet.) Iron is about 7874 kg/m³. So that's about 157480 kg, or 346456 pounds. YMMV.

(just had to look this up!

--imm

[progressoid]

14. Somebody better call Bruce Willis and the rest of the crew.

[Robb]

15. That would be 17 tons larger than the largest meteorite ever found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoba_meteorite

[cbdo2007]

21. 99% of it probably disentegrated (sp?) in the atmosphere.

The only pieces they'll find will likely be small pebbles.

[Brother Buzz]

25. That's the estimated weight of the meteor, not the metorites spawned from it that struck the earth.

Most of this meteor burned and vaporized

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

16. What fun to go out looking for pieces

but I'm tied to "responsibilities" at this time in my life. Wonder how many students will spend their summer vacation out looking though.

[Liberal_in_LA]

17. did they find it? Is there a crater?

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. It exploded in the air (nt)

[Lars77]

30. A meteor hitting Las Vegas.. A kind of biblical ending to the place don´t you think?

[haele]

34. Kewl - and did we even know that it was coming in close enough

That if it hadn't disintegrated so spectacularly when it hit the atmosphere, it might have hit us? Yes, let's cut some more of NASA's budget...

Haele