Area of Earth = 5.1 x 10^8 km^2All right, I admit being involved in a truly legitimate DGU may be slightly more likely than this, but not enough to justify owning and especially carrying guns.
about 500 meteorites fall every year
area of los angeles = 1200 km^2
estimate the probability that a meteorite will fall in Los angeles in the next year.
QUAKER CITY, Ohio - An Ohio man says he was standing in his yard when he was struck by a falling object from the sky.
A Washington DC television station is reporting an apparent meteorite fall in Lorton, Va. The space rock, which has been taken to the Smithsonian Institution, crashed through the roof of a dentist's office at around 5:45 p.m. on Monday, narrowly missing patients and staff.
The story on the Web site of WUSA9 in Washington says the mango-sized meteorite crashed through the roof and acoustical tiles of the Williamsburg Square Family Practice office in Lorton. Dr. Frank Ciampi told the station the crash was so loud he thought bookshelves had toppled.
Rob Wesel recently tracked down the Grimsby space rock, which he's now putting up for sale on the Internet. He says it's unlikely that he'll get back the money he spent on the cross-continent adventure he took to find the 14.5 gram stone.
He figures he'll be lucky to get $2,500 toward a trip that cost twice that for him and a buddy. He's more hoping to trade his gem for a type of meteorite he's missing in his collection of several hundred.
Back on September 25th, a fireball blazed across the sky in southern Ontario. Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario suspected a meteorite touched down somewhere in the Grimsby area.
Another clue that something from outer space had indeed landed came from a family who noticed that the windshield of their SUV had been smashed. They called in investigators from the university, who directed search efforts.
So far, 13 specimens from outer space have been found. Phil McCausland from the university suspects there are more to be discovered, as well.
LIBERAL, Kan. — A father and son have an extraterrestrial explanation for the strange rock that recently landed in their backyard in southwest Kansas. They are convinced it's a meteorite.
Chandler Harp, 10, was playing in the backyard of his Liberal home when he heard what sounded like an explosion about 15 feet from where he was standing. He looked over to see a plume of dirt and debris shoot 5 feet high.
At the bottom of a foot-deep hole, he found a 2-inch rock and showed it to his dad, Lee.
Once Lee Harp got a look at the metallic rock, he was certain it wasn't from this world. He said, "I knew he had a meteorite."
Credit: Pierre Thomas (LST), ENS LyonA meteoroid is a sand to boulder-sized particle of debris in the Solar System. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth's (or another body's) atmosphere is called a meteor. If a meteoroid reaches the ground, it is then called a meteorite.
The biggest asteroid to hit Earth on any given day is likely to be about 40 centimeters, in a given year about 4 meters, and in a given century about 20 meters. These statistics are obtained by the following:
Over at least the range from 5 centimeters (2 inches) to roughly 300 meters (1,000 feet), the rate at which Earth receives meteors obeys a power-law distribution (meaning there is no typical size in the conventional sense) as follows:
N (>D) = 37 D {-2.7}
where N(>D) is the expected number of objects larger than a diameter of D meters to hit Earth in a year.
This is based on observations of bright meteors seen from the ground and space, combined with surveys of near Earth asteroids. Above 300 meters in diameter, the predicted rate is somewhat higher, with a two-kilometer asteroid (one million->megaton TNT equivalent) every couple of million years — about 10 times as often as the power-law extrapolation would predict.
