Strange streak discussion: 2004 Dec 7 APOD

[Guest]

As I stated earlier on.. egos are in the way now

Please could you post the fake images you stated you created so easily, so we can judge the merits of your argument? You'll excuse us if we don't take your word for it.

Oh, and until you do so, I'd say you can safely be ignored as a troll.

[Bob Peterson]

Well... it only took me five minutes to create multiple fakes of the same image, as well as other images... while retaining all digital information. And I am not a graphics artist. So what you are sayng is that the whole thing relies heavily upon your belief in the utter purity of heart of a person you don't know. OK, I can buy that. But, you must state that as a prerequisite in your explorations of the truth here. Thanks. Have a good holiday!

To have faked it, the photographer would have had to be cleverer than everyone on this board combined. He'd have had to introduce the subtle curvature of the trail along the apparent wobble, faked an image that on close examination looks remarkably like an insect, *and* have had to do all this in such a way as the effect could be experimentally reproduced by waving a bug in front of a camera set to the mode he says his was set to.

Anyone that clever would surely have better things to do with his time.

You forget that the human eye/brain looks for patterns - even where none exist. As for being clever, what you are viewing is digital artifacts created by the application. It took me no work at all. Cleverness is not required. Again, you wish to ignore probabilities and possibilities, that's called opinion, not science. And when it comes to opinion, ego gets in the way quickly. I'm reminded of a good RUSH song with the lyrics: "everybody knows everything..." Thanks.

Doc Bluto... signing off for the Holidays.
Keep seaching for the truth folks!! This is a good exercise.

"Doc Bluto... signing off for the Holidays." How convenient, I must say.

[Guest]

Doc Bluto... signing off for the Holidays.
Keep seaching for the truth folks!! This is a good exercise.

"Doc Bluto... signing off for the Holidays." How convenient, I must say.

Pity he is back though

[Bob Peterson]

Doc Bluto... signing off for the Holidays.
Keep seaching for the truth folks!! This is a good exercise.

"Doc Bluto... signing off for the Holidays." How convenient, I must say.

Pity he is back though

Oooops. Well, Doc Bluto, as has already been requested, hows about posting those "fake" images you suggested you have created.

[Guest]

The trail is pretty obvious; in this case though it appears (to me) to be caused by reflection of ambient light from the bee, rather than as a result of the bee blocking light from the background (as was the case in my experiment, and as proposed as an explanation for the trail on the APOD image).

I agree. The lighting is wrong in this picture. The bee should be back-lit except for the flash. Also, the bee is too close to something, which is why you can see its shadow from the flash.

None the less, I'd still say the image supports the insect theory; after all, if the camera had been underneath the bee rather than above, it would show a dark trail rather than a light one.

[flyf0r3v3r]

The streak looks exactly like a contrail shadow, which could have briefly appeared as the shadow swept across the area. This would only be seen when the shadow appears to point in the direction of the sun from the viewers perspective.

It would be quite a coincidence if the shadow briefly appeared at the moment the light bulb burned out.

[HAL 9000 (RAJ)]

This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Moderator, please pull the plug on this one before it devolves into a cesspool of ad hominem attacks between those who have not taken the time to read the previous posts.

[Bethany Joy Peters]

Shadow and lightning

I would have to say stop talking about a shadow from the light housing or the lamp post itself. The nature of shadows radiating from an object close to the source is to get wider as it gets farther from the object casting the shadow which the dark streak doesn't. I also doubt that it is a shadow caused by a con trail. You would need to have a flat thin cloud cover to see that, which we do not have here. Note also that if you look closely the streak goes underneath (or over top of) the lighter cloud on the upper left of the streak. If it was a shadow from a jet contrail it would be warped as it went over that cloud unless the cloud was on the direct line between the camera and the sun, which it is not.
When you take this into consideration, there seems little possibility that it could be a shadow. I think that it looks much more like a particular trail, a dust or plasma trail of some kind. I think that the most likely suggestion has been the idea of ball lightning. I do not know if there is a plasma runner associated with ball lightning, but it would explain the flash. It could also disable the light without causing any specific damage. I wish the photographer knew the nature of the damage to the light or whether the bulb was blown out. That would help considerably, but with the given information, I think that the ball lightning is the best explanation for the flash. I do not know the nature of ball lightning, but if it came down at an angel the streak may have been a trail of ozone produced by the ball lightning. Or it may have just been the light shorting out and the streak may not have been associated with the flash at all and been a low jet trail (the actual trail not the shadow) but that seems unlikely considering it would have had to have formed below the condensation level.

[Vayenn]

regarding the bee picture a few posts ago, I think the resemblance is superficial. If the reflection came from a bee, there seems to be a claim of three components, wing, thoraxic, and yellow abdominal. My concern is that the abdominal oval intersects the semicircular presumed thoraxic reflection. Whereas in bee anatomy the circles of the abdomen and thorax should be separate. Also, there is no interrupution in the supposed reflection between the two straight wing reflections, and the semicircular thoraxic reflection, wheras I think a real bee reflection should show some interrpution between these in this case bluish components due to bee anatomy. In the bee pictures I've just looked at, the thorax appears fuzzy and non reflective, and in other pictures I see a filled oval reflection, and not a neat semicircular reflection.

Yeah, it's not obviously a bee. To me, it appears to be something greenish between the "wings", more like another "body segment" or "head", perhaps. Maybe a biologist could see whether it resonably resembles any insect sommon in the area.

No doubt, further images from the occasion would be valuable as they may or may not show further streaks.

[Bob Peterson]

Remember this doctored image posted by bloggs on page 4?

http://www.fresnl.org/list/things/bogus.jpg

Doc Bluto, how about some of your fakes?

[hazeii3]

Yeah, it's not obviously a bee. To me, it appears to be something greenish between the "wings", more like another "body segment" or "head", perhaps. Maybe a biologist could see whether it resonably resembles any insect sommon in the area.

Back on page 98, we got a report from the site - here's part of the message from back there.

I live an Darwin and have just visited this spot for the evening sunset. I noticed lots of flying ants at the rate of about twenty a minit. They are about half an inch long with their wings longer than the body. Their flight pattern viewed in the same direction seemed to match the angle of the track more often than not. they are slow flying but because of a light breeze tend appear to fly very straight. the wing beats are visible with the naked eye but only just. Body is the color of honey and the wings are transparent and rounded at the tips. The cliff is about 50ft with trees at the base so you are looking over the canopy of the trees. Other bugs of interest are dragon flies moving very fast and close to 4 inches long but their body is long and thin so highly unlikely. These white ants come out in the evening after rain in the previous days to mate and will last in plague preportions for at least another month until the wet season sets in properly. A photographer targeting these flying ants should have no trouble getting some in a photo to check for track based on shutter speeds similar to waynes photo.

[sualC atnaS]

Remember this doctored image posted by bloggs on page 4?

http://www.fresnl.org/list/things/bogus.jpg

Doc Bluto, how about some of your fakes?

A little less weight and a little more blur and you've got it.

Anyway for everyone who's been waiting here is the solution.
http://www.library.gsu.edu/spcoll/spcol ... -5_036.jpg

Happy Holidays,
Mike

[Guest]

Posted: Fri Dec 17, 2004 10:11 pm Post subject: Re: victorengel -- your further comments

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ruidh wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
This object may be falling at 200 mph [slow terminal velocity for a round rock but fast for a man - he'd have to be curled into a ball]. If that's a 45 degree trajectory then it has a 200mph horizontal velocity and it's velocity at the water would be 282.84 mph


You don't appear to understand terminal velocity. If the 200mph were the terminal velocity, then it could not have a velocity of some 280mph at the water.


I don't know why you are so hostile to a bug theory. It is much more likely than an unusual meteorite.[/quote]

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean Terminal Velocity, I meant Quirminal Velocity. That speed that can't be defined when falling towards a gravity well.

Back to top
Nope, it is a meteor; you have not dissuaded me yet.

Initial mass and speed and friction are a factor in determining final velocity. By the time it got here it traveled through the atmosphere at a minimum 30,000 miles an hour like, most space objects that are not in an initial orbit. Nickel iron is heavy enough that the object could have weighed very little, a gram or so, but initially was a few kilos of very heavy iron meteor. This is speculation of course without proof. The calculations for this hypothesis can't be too hard. The object might have had a higher initial velocity upon entrance to the atmosphere. The combination of material could have been a lot of things.

It would be interesting to get a metal detector there. Could be worth a few bucks, especially on e-bay.


Innitial mass and speed and friction are a factor in determining final velocity. By the time it got here it traveled through the atmosphere at a minimum 30,000 miles an hour like, most space objects that are not in an initial orbit. Nickle iron is heavy enough that the object could have weighed very little, a gram or so, but initailly was a few kilos of very heavy iron meteor. This is speculation of course without proof. The calculations for this hypothesis can't be too hard. The object might have had a higher initial velocity upon entrance to the atmosphere. The combination of material could have been alot of things.

It would be interesting to get a metal detector there. Could be worth a few bucks. Especially on e-bay.

[no57va@shaw.ca]

Innitial mass and speed and friction are a factor in determining final velocity. By the time it got here it traveled through the atmosphere at a minimum 30,000 miles an hour like, most space objects that are not in an initial orbit. Nickle iron is heavy enough that the object could have weighed very little, a gram or so, but initailly was a few kilos of very heavy iron meteor. This is speculation of course without proof. The calculations for this hypothesis can't be too hard. The object might have had a higher initial velocity upon entrance to the atmosphere. The combination of material could have been alot of things.

It would be interesting to get a metal detector there. Could be worth a few bucks. Especially on e-bay.

Back to top

[Bob Peterson]

This Thread
Is On Its Deathbed.

[Guest]

point one was that no one else had even commented on my suggestion so how can hOme alOne say that it was being treated as a "well known fact" when in fact there had been zero discussion on this idea, except for his comment and point two was that my comment, that the streak and the flash were perhaps individual, unrelated events and we all may be trying to connect dots that aren't able to be connected was completely ignored

OMG have you even read a tiny part of this thread? Streak and flash being caused by separate unrelated events has been discussed and largely dismissed because it’s unlikely that a three-way coincidence (ie streak, flash and photo) would occur. Here’s the first post that mentions the possibility of them being two separate unrelated events, way back on page 5: http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... c&start=68
The discussion on that topic continues after that post.

The exploding globe topic has been done to death. I would point out that the vast majority of modern lights in Australia have a perspex/plastic housing surrounding the globe (especially in the case of high pressure sodium vapour lamps) that would prevent smoke from a bulb explosion spreading in the way the photo requires. Old fashioned incandescent lights may be bare but these are not likely to explode and certainly not with smoke since their tungsten filament is in a vacuum.

The APOD description said, “the light pole near the flash has been inspected and does not show any damage”. Can I suggest that a bulb that had exploded would display visible damage, in contrast to APOD’s statement. APOD also said, “although the light inside was not working.” I note the statement, “the light inside”. Inside what? I can only assume inside housing.

Without someone on the ground double-checking on the presence/absence of plastic housing for us, it’s silly to speculate further on the globe theory, since the smoke would, if the globe was in a housing, be from a fourth coincidental event (unless the very repetitive, but sensible, smith@canada is correct). Besides, as many others have said, if the flash was caused by a globe burning out, why aren’t the other lights on the jetty on?

This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Moderator, please pull the plug on this one before it devolves into a cesspool of ad hominem attacks between those who have not taken the time to read the previous posts.

Please yes! If there isn’t enough information here for APOD’s staff to make a decision now, there never will be.

[MadCadmium]

HAL 9000 (RAJ) wrote:

This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Moderator, please pull the plug on this one before it devolves into a cesspool of ad hominem attacks between those who have not taken the time to read the previous posts.

Guest wrote:
Please yes! If there isn’t enough information here for APOD’s staff to make a decision now, there never will be.

LOL

[H0meAl0ne]

Innitial mass and speed and friction are a factor in determining final velocity. By the time it got here it traveled through the atmosphere at a minimum 30,000 miles an hour like, most space objects that are not in an initial orbit. Nickle iron is heavy enough that the object could have weighed very little, a gram or so, but initailly was a few kilos of very heavy iron meteor. This is speculation of course without proof. The calculations for this hypothesis can't be too hard. The object might have had a higher initial velocity upon entrance to the atmosphere. The combination of material could have been alot of things.

OK, it's your right to be sceptical, but I think perhaps you should ask yourself what would disuade you from this hypothesis.

As you suggest, the calculations are not hard. If you go to http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ you will find a meteroite impact simulator that lets you play around with initial conditions like density, initial speed and angle etc.

People can go there and try to set up initial condition where only a tiny fragment hits the Earth at a decent speed and produces anything like the results you predict.

You are postulating a condition where the objects starts with high mass and velocity (and hence kinetic energy and momentum), then almost completely burns up in the atmosphere hence reducing its mass to a near zero amount, yet retains sufficient speed to produce effects upon impact that are easily visible from 500m away, but show no lasting effects 15 seconds later and no visible damage upon inspection.

The problem you face is that when an object of uniform density vaporises due to friction, its mass will go down with the cube of its radius while its cross sectional area will go down with the square of its radius. In other words, as the object vaporises during its descent, the mass decreases proportionally faster than the cross sectional area which helps determines drag. At the same time the atmosphere is getting denser as you approach ground level. The ratio of drag to mass will increase rapidly. Drag will slow the object much faster than it can shed mass. The more mass it sheds, the faster it will slow down anyway.

If you are successful then come back here with those initial conditions and the result and we'll have a look at them and see if they match what we see in the photo.

The only way you can get around this is to propose an object with a near airfoil shape, suitably stabilised with fins or something, possibly with some sort of stratified density distribution, possibly saboted in some manner (with the dense, high mass sabot discarded moments before impact, yet leaving no trace anywhere). Sort of like an armour piercing anti-tank round (see http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m829a1.htm).

But smaller, lighter and much MUCH faster.

Doesn't seem likely to me, but that's just an opinion.

[Doc Bluto]

As I stated earlier on.. egos are in the way now

It's a shame that yours seems to be the biggest problem here.

As has already been stated at least half a dozen times. the purpose of the discussion on this board has been to figure out a possible solution assuming the photographer has not doctored the photos. This in no way precludes the hoax as a possible solution and no one I know has rejected the possibility that it /is/ a hoax.

Apparently to you, any discussion beyond the hoax is an affront to the natural order of your universe and deserves the utmost hostility.

It's a shame your attitude is so poor and your maturity level is so low. But it's not surprising.

OK, lemme see if I get this straight... As you state, the purpose of the discussion is to figure out possible solutions while discarding and ignoring solutions. Geez, that makes little or no sense, logically, or scientifically. I'd call that a waste of time or a bad game. And, I hadn;t relaized that you were setting the rules. ?

And as far as you taking this as a personal affront, or considering this to be hostile, merely proves my point about egos getting in the way of logical thought. You've proven my point perfectly. Further, your resorting to name calling and finger pointing ("poor attitude", and "low maturity level") continues to refine my point. I'm half amused and half disappointed.

You simply don't get it. You are trying to find a solution but set up preconditions that preclude certain circumstances - no matter how likely they may or may not be. I'm afraid to say this, but that's not science, that's emotional wishful thinking. You might try accomodating other points of view without getting worked up. Defend your position, by all means. But when I see that preconditions are set for this magical guessing game, then it's a waste of time and nonsensical. And it's silly for you to get worked up because someone else isn't playing by YOUR rules. Take a breath, enjoy the sunset, take a walk, read a book. If you want to pretend to play scientist, then try thinking like a scientist ... and then, have a nice day.

[Doc Bluto]

To have faked it, the photographer would have had to be cleverer than everyone on this board combined. He'd have had to introduce the subtle curvature of the trail along the apparent wobble, faked an image that on close examination looks remarkably like an insect, *and* have had to do all this in such a way as the effect could be experimentally reproduced by waving a bug in front of a camera set to the mode he says his was set to.

Anyone that clever would surely have better things to do with his time.

You forget that the human eye/brain looks for patterns - even where none exist. As for being clever, what you are viewing is digital artifacts created by the application. It took me no work at all. Cleverness is not required. Again, you wish to ignore probabilities and possibilities, that's called opinion, not science. And when it comes to opinion, ego gets in the way quickly. I'm reminded of a good RUSH song with the lyrics: "everybody knows everything..." Thanks.

Doc Bluto... signing off for the Holidays.
Keep seaching for the truth folks!! This is a good exercise.

"Doc Bluto... signing off for the Holidays." How convenient, I must say.

OK, sorry, I'm back... I couldn't resist...

[Doc Bluto]

This Thread
Is On Its Deathbed.

Ha ha ha... you sir, are correct.

[Ruidh]

Innitial mass and speed and friction are a factor in determining final velocity. By the time it got here it traveled through the atmosphere at a minimum 30,000 miles an hour like, most space objects that are not in an initial orbit. Nickle iron is heavy enough that the object could have weighed very little, a gram or so, but initailly was a few kilos of very heavy iron meteor. This is speculation of course without proof. The calculations for this hypothesis can't be too hard. The object might have had a higher initial velocity upon entrance to the atmosphere. The combination of material could have been alot of things.

So you are trying to tell me that a meteor underwent enough frictional heating to boil off most of its mass but not enough to have accelerated the meteor to be anywhere near vertical?

Given the lack of damage to the light fixture and the complete absence of any disturbance in the water in the after picture, the meteor hypothesis seems dead, dead, dead.

[Cloudbait]

As you suggest, the calculations are not hard. If you go to http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ you will find a meteroite impact simulator that lets you play around with initial conditions like density, initial speed and angle etc.

People can go there and try to set up initial condition where only a tiny fragment hits the Earth at a decent speed and produces anything like the results you predict...

There is really only one way that you can get small meteorites down to the ground while they still have cosmic velocities: if they result from the very low altitude breakup of a much larger body. The Sikhote-Alin fall in 1947 is a good example of this. The parent body, massing perhaps 1000 tons, survived to below 6km before breaking up. The result was thousands of small pieces that reached the ground at much higher than terminal velocity; at supersonic speeds in some cases. Many craters were formed. This was not the sort of event to go unnoticed! Low altitude breakups like this are very rare indeed, and very obvious. Clearly, nothing like this happened at Darwin. Other than this, there is simply no mechanism for getting a low mass meteoroid to the ground at anything other than terminal velocity (except, as you say, by assuming a very precise shape and orientation; even then you have the problem that hypersonic stability tends to be difficult to maintain without the active control of flight surfaces).

[hawaiianmike]

Ha Ha---we've all been had---this is like an Alfred Hitchcock movie (a bad one) where we are all unwitting subjects of an evil scientist---thius is now obviously a psychological forum, not an astronomy based forum, which was the evil intent to begin with---as we degenerate into our caveman (any cavewomen out there?), proving that "the Lord of the Flies" was an accurate portrayal of the human condition, it is time to search out and find this Pryde fellow and string him up---let's hire a dectective and get to it!!
PS, I still don't think it's a bug but just a co-incidental record of a bulb exploding and some unrelated event on the land mass--pppssfffttthhhttt!!!

[Deckham]

quote="Bethany Joy Peters"]Shadow and lightning

I would have to say stop talking about a shadow from the light housing or the lamp post itself. The nature of shadows radiating from an object close to the source is to get wider as it gets farther from the object casting the shadow which the dark streak doesn't.


I've read all the posts - yes, all of them.
Just pointing out something to the above poster, to through even more variables into the equation. An shadow does not need to appear to get wider, the further away it gets from the source.

Yes, it does need to get wider. But does not need to appear to do so. It would depend on the trajectory in relation to the viewpoint. IE, the further away from the viewpoint, the smaller it would appear (perspective).


On the subject of bugs and flashes - do I have this right? If the flash went off at the end of the exposure, then the bug was travelling from top left to centre (conveniently placing it centre-stage). So shutter opens, captures fast-moving bug-trail, illuminates fixed position with flash, and then? Does the shutter close immedietly during or after the flash, or does it remain open for any length of time? If there was any time at all between flash and shutter-close, then the blurred streak should continue on for a while, no?

The reverse is true if the flash went off at the opening of the shutter (and bug travelling opposite direction) - any time between the opening and the flash, and the streak would start before the flash-point.

I know little about cameras, and even less about digital ones. But it seems illogical to me that a flash would only be effective for a fraction of the time the shutter is open. 1/20 is a relatively short time. How long did the flash last for? I'm having difficulty accepting that it was effective for a fraction of 1/20..... (and therefore highlighting the bug for that instant only).

Having said all that, I did see the 'experimental scientist's' mock-up. In that image, the bee seems to cause the same sort of effect as the Pryde photo - but I don't understand it.

Appreciate an explanation.