I Didn't Know That

owlice · Post by **owlice** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 12:27 pm

You had my little hopes up! I read "speakers" and thought "stereo speakers," which around here means a trunk filled with a subwoofer and others, and oh, what I wouldn't give to have something capable of silencing them!

neufer · Post by **neufer** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 12:41 pm

owlice wrote:
I read "speakers" and thought "stereo speakers," which around here means a trunk filled with a subwoofer and others, and oh, what I wouldn't give to have something capable of silencing them!

bystander wrote: Trunk (torso) refers to the body of an animal , separate from the limbs (appendages) and head.

owlice · Post by **owlice** » Thu Mar 01, 2012 12:56 pm

By "them," I was referring to the speakers, not the trunk, and let's not go separating any appendages and heads from owl torsos, thank you very much!

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 5:33 pm

Stuntmen and Gliders at work (play?) in Austria.

More photos and Video.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... 00mph.html

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 6:16 pm

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Nature's 'icy finger of death' caught on tape for first time.

Article below picture, followed by time lapse video of actual event.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/ ... p=trending

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:50 pm

WARNING!! This could happen in a place near you.

When Space Attacks.
6-strange things that meteors have done.

http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/153 ... story.html

Ann · Post by **Ann** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:22 am

Well, guess what, Beyond? One or two years ago I read in a Swedish newspaper that a man in northern Sweden may actually have been killed by a meteorite a hundred years ago or so. The man had gone out for a walk (or maybe he had gone out to do some work: to cut down a tree, to chop some wood, to check a trap he had set for an animal), but he fell down and was found several hours later lying on the ground. A piece of rock was found next to him. The man was brought back home, but this was long ago and I don't know what medical treatment he could have, and a few days later he died. The rock beside the man was preserved, and now it has been proved to be a meteorite. Perhaps the poor man was struck by it, so that it caused his death.

I read this one or two years ago, and I don't think I could find the quite small article again. But maybe the poor man in northern Sweden really was killed by a meteorite!

Ann

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 2:08 pm

I should think that there would have have been some very visible marks left from the impact that would have been mentioned. Oh well, just another strange mystery that will go unsolved. Plenty of those around.

Ann · Post by **Ann** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 2:21 pm

And it was designed by a twelve-year-old, too!

45-foot paper airplane glides over Arizona desert

Ann

Chris Peterson · Post by **Chris Peterson** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 2:46 pm

Beyond wrote:I should think that there would have have been some very visible marks left from the impact that would have been mentioned. Oh well, just another strange mystery that will go unsolved. Plenty of those around.

A meteorite wouldn't hit you very hard. If it hit you in the head where you had hair, it might not break the skin at all, even while causing brain damage. Certainly, a modern forensic analysis would reveal the cause of death, but 100 years ago in rural Sweden... I can easily see something like that being missed.

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 9:10 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
Beyond wrote:I should think that there would have have been some very visible marks left from the impact that would have been mentioned. Oh well, just another strange mystery that will go unsolved. Plenty of those around.
A meteorite wouldn't hit you very hard. If it hit you in the head where you had hair, it might not break the skin at all, even while causing brain damage. Certainly, a modern forensic analysis would reveal the cause of death, but 100 years ago in rural Sweden... I can easily see something like that being missed.

They actually slow down that much?? Of course if it weighed enough, speed wouldn't matter. The gravity of the situation would be enough.

Chris Peterson · Post by **Chris Peterson** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 11:52 pm

Beyond wrote:They actually slow down that much?? Of course if it weighed enough, speed wouldn't matter. The gravity of the situation would be enough.

They land at terminal velocity... the same as a rock thrown off a tall building or cliff. In order to hit the ground still carrying some of their original speed they need to start out between 10 and 30 feet across, and will still be several feet across (or more) at impact... in which case the cause of death would be pretty obvious (if they could figure out who you were after scraping you off the bottom of a small crater).

alter-ego · Post by **alter-ego** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 4:55 am

Chris Peterson wrote:
Beyond wrote:They actually slow down that much?? Of course if it weighed enough, speed wouldn't matter. The gravity of the situation would be enough.
They land at terminal velocity... the same as a rock thrown off a tall building or cliff. In order to hit the ground still carrying some of their original speed they need to start out between 10 and 30 feet across, and will still be several feet across (or more) at impact... in which case the cause of death would be pretty obvious (if they could figure out who you were after scraping you off the bottom of a small crater).

For terminal-velocity metal (iron/copper) objects, I think the results of a top-of-the-head impact break down something like this:

Penny (0.1oz) => hurts, and a good head of hair would help
1/2" diameter ball bearing (0.3oz) => Not good, you'd wish you had a hard hat
1" diameter ball bearing (2.4oz) => Too big to survive

Using a conservative drag coefficient, I would hazard an educated guess that a spherical, stony meteorite with an impact weight of ≈4oz (≈1.3" diameter) would be deadly. Pound-class meteorites have penetrated houses, and the 20-pound Peekskill meteorite did a number on the back of a Chevy Malibu.

Chris Peterson · Post by **Chris Peterson** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 5:13 am

alter-ego wrote:Using a conservative drag coefficient, I would hazard an educated guess that a spherical, stony meteorite with an impact weight of ≈4oz (≈1.3" diameter) would be deadly. Pound-class meteorites have penetrated houses, and the 20-pound Peekskill meteorite did a number on the back of a Chevy Malibu.

The terminal velocity of the body you describe would be about 100 m/s. The kinetic energy of impact would be about 500 joules- say, six times that of being hit by a baseball thrown at an average speed. How much damage that would do would depend on where it hit.

My point was that being hit by a meteorite on the head could result in serious brain damage without obvious external trauma... which sounds like the situation described by Ann.

alter-ego · Post by **alter-ego** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:32 am

Chris Peterson wrote: ...
My point was that being hit by a meteorite on the head could result in serious brain damage without obvious external trauma... which sounds like the situation described by Ann.

Thanks for the clarification - I did miss your point.

...
Certainly, a modern forensic analysis would reveal the cause of death, but 100 years ago in rural Sweden... I can easily see something like that being missed.

I agree. Given the circumstances of the times and the story, there's all kinds of unknowns that such evidence could plausibly be missed. In fact, it is in question whether the rock was a contributor to the man's death, or if it did hit him, where? In my opinion, I personally think the odds are low for a meteor strike to the head that could result in death and yet not show external trauma. Of course there could be extenuating circumstances or events that explain why he died. This is a classic story where we probably don't know really what happened.

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 6:24 pm

Cat survives 19 story plunge from Boston Highrise.
Talk about being light on your feet!!

http://www.wfsb.com/story/17227777/cat- ... -high-rise

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 12:21 am

Attention all Mozart music lovers (and others also) A composition made by him when he was about ten has been found.
Click below for the articule and a video of it being played. It's about 4-minutes long. To me... it seemed longer.

http://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2012/ ... us-mozart/

orin stepanek · Post by **orin stepanek** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 1:18 pm

I always liked Mozart music; but I could never play the piano! To play different notes with my left hand would get me messed up with the notes my right hand should be playing.

Ann · Post by **Ann** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 1:55 pm

Beyond wrote:

Click below for the articule and a video of it being played. It's about 4-minutes long. To me... it seemed longer.

I guess I sort of agree with you.

Take a look at this statue, however, a portrait of the young boy who wrote that piece of music!

Ann

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 4:50 pm

I noticed the bronzed pigeons at his feet. I guess pigeons have been around for quite a while. I wonder if the real pigeons poop on the bronzed pigeons as much as they poop on everything else.

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 3:29 pm

4-feet of hail in texas.
Some of the tall tales that come out of texas are actually true

Keep in mind that the big rockish looking stuff you see is actually dirty hail.
Hail, hail the gangs stuck here...

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... storm?lite

Ann · Post by **Ann** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 3:47 pm

Oh my, Beyond. Four feet of hail on the ground is sure worse than the snowflakes in the air that we got here for Easter!

Ann

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 6:40 pm

But much better than the 4-feet of snow i had on my front lawn last February, as the snow hung around for quite a while.

Beyond · Post by **Beyond** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 6:46 pm

In The I Don't Quite Know What to Say Category...

Canada issues glow-in-the-dark dinosaur quarter.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/ca ... 52860.html

rstevenson · Post by **rstevenson** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 7:30 pm

Canada issues glow-in-the-dark dinosaur quarter.

That simply commemorates the fact that Canadians too glow in the dark. We have to; there's so much dark up here.

Rob

Starship Asterisk*

I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

45-foot paper airplane glides over Arizona desert

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That

Re: I Didn't Know That