NASA on the Chelyabinsk Meteor Strike

[don]

Western Ontario Professor of Physics Peter Brown analyzed the data: "The asteroid was about 17 meters in diameter and weighed approximately 10,000 metric tons," he reports. "It struck Earth's atmosphere at 40,000 mph and broke apart about 12 to 15 miles above Earth's surface. The energy of the resulting explosion exceeded 470 kilotons of TNT." For comparison, the first atomic bombs produced only 15 to 20 kilotons.

[fengguo1]

Re: NASA on the Chelyabinsk Meteor Strike

and an alternate take ... http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013...to-the-system/

[ASH]

Re: NASA on the Chelyabinsk Meteor Strike

Sounds alternative, alright.

[jk]

Re: NASA on the Chelyabinsk Meteor Strike

Sounds alternative, alright.

i'd never come across rationalwiki before. looks like fun! thanks.

[ASH]

Re: NASA on the Chelyabinsk Meteor Strike

i'd never come across rationalwiki before. looks like fun! thanks.

I came across "plasma cosmology" in the early 90's. My impression was that there's a kernel of good E&M there, but a whole lot of grandiose overreach. This appears to be an outgrowth of that. Plasma physics is real enough, and E&M does play a big role in a lot of astrophysical phenomena, but they have deluded themselves into rejecting parts of science that are on extremely solid experimental footing in favor of their paradigm. From the thunderbolts website, it appears they:

• believe stars are powered by electrical discharges rather than nuclear fusion
• believe the craters on the moon result from massive interplanetary electrical discharges as opposed to impacts
• believe that supernovae result from something like a power surge in a galaxy-scale circuit rather than implosion of a stellar core followed by a thermonuclear blast
• don't believe in compact objects like neutron stars or black holes

They also doubt that dark matter and energy are real. Frankly, I'll give them that one. (My bet is with mainstream science, but I grant that the available evidence is pretty circumstantial; I can see in that context why an entirely alternate theory of large-scale structure would be appealing.)