Unidentified object from sky destroys car in Cottonwood

[Moostang]

I don't post to much, but when I saw this article I thought about the forum. This article was in our local newspaper, now I know meteorites are not supposed to be hot by the time they hit the ground, so is it the shear speed at which this hit that caused glass to melt? There are pictures in the article.


http://www.redding.com/news/2009/mar/12/unidentified-object-from-sky-destroys-car-in/

A meteorite may have been what smashed into the windshield of a Cottonwood couple's sport utility vehicle late last month, destroying much of the dashboard and melting some of the glass.

"I hate to say it, but I think something fell out of the sky and did some damage to a car," said Mike Birondo, a fire inspector with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. [more] (http://www.redding.com/news/2009/mar/12/unidentified-object-from-sky-destroys-car-in/)

[Cougar]

Hmm. I wonder if it was part of one of the spacecraft that collided in orbit a couple weeks ago and spread debris all over the place... most of which is still in orbit. I saw a report that some pieces were going to be coming down, but it sounded like they had it very well tracked and could estimate when they would be entering the atmosphere fairly accurately....

[rommel543]

The piece only looks to be about 2-3 inches in size. Would they be able to track something that size? Also with the accident, China's satellite incident and all the other problems lately, could they have missed a couple pieces?

[mugaliens]

The glass is not melted. Windshields are a sandwich of glass and plastic. It's the plastic you see pointing down. Furthermore, glass will not melt from a glancing blow, even with intense heat. It's more likely to shatter due to thermal expansion.

Finally, the glass in windshields is safety glass like the side windows, and shattered into many small, rectangular pieces, leaving nothing but the plastic behind.

I have no idea if it's a piece of a satellite, other than to say it doesn't look like all the meteorites I've seen.

[Moostang]

If you look a the end it does look melted in some way, maybe it is just because the plastic stretched since it had enough speed behind it. Typically when something like a tree branch goes through windshields, you normally see the hold then maybe the windshield dented that way, I have never seen the glass act like the second picture on the page.

[JohnD]

Curiously for such a 'sexy' news item, there is very little on the wires about this. Well done for spotting it, Moostang.

I can only find one other 'Net item, from the Californai Fire news site calfire.blogspot.com/, wher the same reporter says that an officer of the CA Fire Dept. has sent a fragment for analysis. Caution in going to that site - it crashed and took all the other IE windows that I had open with it! Twice!

John

[Cougar]

...the glass in windshields is safety glass like the side windows...

Windshield glass is "safety glass" or laminated. As far as I know, most auto manufacturers save a few cents by using tempered glass in the side windows, which is not laminated and will just shatter. In case of a rollover (Ford Explorer, anyone?), laminated side windows could better keep a passenger inside the compartment and keep them from being decapitated or ejected from the vehicle, which usually results in death.


This cheerful message is brought to you by your local traumatic brain injury association....

[Josh]

Windshield glass is "safety glass" or laminated. As far as I know, most auto manufacturers save a few cents by using tempered glass in the side windows, which is not laminated and will just shatter. In case of a rollover (Ford Explorer, anyone?), laminated side windows could better keep a passenger inside the compartment and keep them from being decapitated or ejected from the vehicle, which usually results in death.


This cheerful message is brought to you by your local traumatic brain injury association....


Not often decapitation ends in death ...

I wonder if we can find out what the object was made of.

[mugaliens]

Windshield glass is "safety glass" or laminated.

Did you miss my previous sentence?


Mugs - Windshields are a sandwich of glass and plastic.


In case of a rollover (Ford Explorer, anyone?), laminated side windows could better keep a passenger inside the compartment and keep them from being decapitated or ejected from the vehicle, which usually results in death.

Seat belts work wonders to minimize ejecta and cranial mishappenation, as well, regardless of whether the windows survive the crash.

[loglo]

Hmm . until Mugs post above, "mishappenation" was a googlewhack.

[NEOWatcher]

Did you miss my previous sentence?
That's not the part he disagreed with. It was the comparison to side windows which was at issue.