> scattered small meteorites on the ground at the impact site about 37 miles (60 kilometers) west of Berlin
Do we know how fast those small meteorites are travelling when they hit the ground? Are they like bullets or more like snowflakes?
Do we know how fast those small meteorites are travelling when they hit the ground? Are they like bullets or more like snowflakes?
Here’s a recent one: https://abcnews.go.com/US/scientists-confirm-meteorite-crash...
It pierced the roof but didn’t pierce the floor.
One nitpick here - meteors aren't called meteorites until they hit the surface.
for a 1m meteorite:
mass = 4/3 * pi * 0.5^3 * 8000 = 4188 kg
area = 2 * pi * 0.5^3 = 0.78 m
The defaults for density and drag coefficient are fine enough. And we get a result of at least 500m/s, assuming air resistance is sufficient to slow it down to terminal velocity. The exact number will vary quite a lot - especially as this is for a whole meter sized meteorite that doesn't disintegrate, but this is at least a reasonable ballpark. So the tl/dr would be: more like a bullet, but with somewhere around 140,000 times the kinetic energy, for a 1m meteorite.
[1] - https://www.gigacalculator.com/calculators/terminal-velocity...