another meteorite, this one said to be 'house-sized' was seen hitting the ground in New South Wales next to the Hume Highway near Menangle close to Sydney: news article

don't know about the 'house-size', 'explosion on impact' and 'very difficult to find' combination, a house sized meteorite (3 or 4 bedrooms?) would leave a fairly sizeable crater...

[edited to add some more info]

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That's what I'm thinking. Doesn't matter if they find the rock, but I'm sure someone would be able to "stumble" into the crater it left, being as big as a house.

Wouldn't the crater from a House sized rock be large?
How can you not "stumble" over it? I personaly thing it was a plane that went down, not a Meteorite.

Something that big would leave a good sized dent, no?

the area seems to be close to Sydney airport, so a plane, though possible, would not have been unnoticed.

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but a private plane.
Alot of times private planes go down un-noticed, even nearby an airport. One of my neighbers was flying his plane around Grand Junction, and it wen't down. The airport is only a few miles outside of GJ, but they had no idea that it happened.

I'm not saying it wasn't a meteorite, but if it was, I think the "House sized" big may have been exagerated.

Given a house sized meteorite would make a very large impact crater (from memory the Barringer Crater impactor was roughly house-sized, no?) and that Menangle is just to the southwest of a city of 4 million and right by a satellite city of Sydney (Campbelltown) yet no-one else noticed a shockwave that flattened their outdoor dunny, my guess is that the motorist saw a fireball and mistook the size of it due to the brightness.

Unless it was a doll's house, maybe? :wink:


(edited to note that the Barringer Crater impactor has been estimated as 150ft in diameter - a very rich man's house perhaps!)

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"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

maybe an out-house? :-s

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Maybe! That would explain why the police officer described the motorist as 'flushed'!

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

Well, I just ran an impact calculation at the Impact Effects website and found that a house-sized stony meteorite (10m dia) coming in at asteroid velocity (17 km/s) would make a crater with a final diameter of 539m. Pretty hard to miss it. The seismic effect would be Richter Magnitude 3.7, and the energy release would be 50 kilotons of TNT. Hard to miss that, also.

Even a 1m dia meteorite would create a 124m dia crater. Maybe they overestimated the size by a couple of orders of magnitude. [-X

Perhaps someone was into the Fosters?

are you suggesting people drink and drive Down Under??

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx

I'd consider the probability higher than an impacting object of that size magically evading detection.

More likely still is a simpler explanation.

being?

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx

I never professed to know the answer; based upon the limited, uncorroborated information in the article it's rather difficult to conclusively ascertain. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd propose the idea of someone being mistaken, concerning the nature of the object or the size.

Recall what happened in Washington recently regarding such an event.

So far, google news search only brings up the one news article. I'll be withholding judgement about a meteorite but I'm pretty close to ruling out 'a house-sized' meteorite. It would definitely have had a seismic impact. The NEIC earthquake website doesn't show anything 3.0 or bigger in Australia.

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hehe... now i see what you mean. yes, the thought had also crossed my mind. hence the title of my thread...

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Pretty laid-back language, these police spokesmen from Oz... ;-)

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Whaddayamean, laid back?? That's a formal Australian Federal Police Force communique! :wink:

__________________
"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

So he also waved with a beer bottle in his hand while giving the statement?

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

to my surprise there's quite a number of people in Australia that actually speak like Steve Irwin! especially in Queensland....

and since i soak up dialects like a sponge, i now speak with a very distinct ozzie accent... #-o

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx

Geez, Harald - the man's not a camel!!

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

[Sideshow Bob tremor of exasperation/revulsion] :x [/Sideshow Bob tremor of exasperation/revulsion]

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

:-s Where did you think I was headed?

i had no idea... 8-[

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx

Careful what you say, AGN Fuel! That would have been a New South Wales copper making that statement.

Anyway, it does remind me of the car commercial:

Somewhere in the dusty outback, a man is surveying the straightness of a fence. He steps back and bumps into a giant termite mound. After a quiet obscenity, he secures a rope around the mound and ties the loose end to his 4 wheel drive. The 4WD's powers are demonstrated as it slowly hauls the mound out of the line of the fence. The man mumbles his satisfaction, and is about to restart his fencing job when -

WHAM!

- a rock about 5 metres in diameter slams into the ground, right where the termite mound had been. Thus the fence path is blocked again.

The man sighs, pulls out the rope again and mutters, "No worries."

must've been a 'Cruiser...

anyway... sanity returns: article.

normal explanations are now appearing on the news...

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx

An excellent example detailing why anecdote yields no scientific value.

Thanks for the follow-up.

How long will it take Nancy to use this?

Australia has has many meteor falls, some large, and some have made little or no crater; it depends ofn the speed, angle of incidence, and whether it breaks up in mid-air.

Having said that almost no observer could accurately judge the size of a meteor while it is in the air, so there is no reason to accept that this was as big as a house.

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