Re: Planet X: TUNGUSKA as Example
In Article <3B2E1A33.1952E9CF@vtt.fi> Mikko Levanto wrote:
> Nancy Lieder wrote:
>> Tunguska was not caused by a meteor or comet.
>> It was a methane gas explosion, caused by a pocket
>> of gas released during an earthquake.
>
> It was a meteor. The meteor was seen in air, flying
> from east to west. It flew almost horizontally, which
> may have been the cause of its explosion in air instead
> of hitting ground.
Why would the stresses on a horizonatally descending
meteor be greater than one falling vertically? The air
in fact is softer than the ground, so in your theoretical
situation (and theory it is) your meteor would simply
slow down and eventually drop to the ground. Do
meteors explode when hitting the ground? They lay
there as rock! Your explanation is not what your
scientists observe in meteor behavior. Meteors do not
explode. They are rock, which may heat to the point
of being molten but that does not cause an explosion.
Do your blast furnaces explode when the metal gets
to the molten stage? It behaves as a liquid, and a
meteor heating to the molten stage would behave as
lava on the move through the air. A Meteor
disintegrate into pieces, theoretically, but then some
remnant would be laying about, but none has been
found in spite of extensive Tunguska searchs.
The reports of a horizontal line of fire in the sky, east
to west, does NOT fit a falling meteor, in fact, as they
behave as trajectories do, descending to a near vertical
drop by the time the touch the ground. The
atmosphere softens their passage as water does to a
bullet fired into it. Do bullets streak endlessly through
the water, or do they slow and drift to the bottom?
Have you heard of the Prevailing Westerlies? The
wind blows steadily west to east, because of the Earths
rotation. Methane is lighter than air, and rises.
Combine these two ingredients and you HAVE your
near horizontal streak, in a spark lit methane mixture at
higher altitudes carrying the burn ALONG the path of
the methane mixture back to the ground. This fits, and
your horizonatlly steaking meteor, which then explodes
to leave no dust or trace of itself, does not.
ZetaTalk