Meteor likely broke on entry
Scientists, collectors scramble to locate fallen space debris
Hanneke Brooymans, with files from Richard Cuthbertson, Calgary Herald , Edmonton Journal
Published: Saturday, November 22, 2008
A fireball spotted by hundreds of people Thursday likely broke into pieces that landed around the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, said a Calgary meteorite expert.
More than 400 people reported seeing the object, said Alan Hildebrand, co-ordinator of the Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre at the University of Calgary. This is by a large margin a record response and it was a tremendous help in narrowing down the fall area, he added.
The scientist estimates the rock that hurtled into the atmosphere likely weighed between one and ten tons. Such large fireballs are rare, he said, with only a couple streaking over Canadian skies a year.
"This is literally a billion watt bulb in the sky," he said.
"That doesn't happen every day. This thing was illuminating the ground over hundreds of kilometres."Hildebrand said he was heading for the possible meteorite fall site Friday evening. He wants to talk to people in the area while their memories of the fireball are still fresh. He also wants to review security camera footage that may have caught the meteor on tape before they deleted.
Hundreds of little meteorites probably fell from the fireball as it tore across the sky, Hildebrand said.
The meteor expert is especially interested in hearing from people in the Wainwright, Provost, Chauvin and Ribstone areas. (Anyone with specific information from that area can report a sighting to
http://miac.uqac.ca or can leave a message for Hildebrand at (403) 220-2291.)
The meteor that fell through the sky may have broken into hundreds of meteorites of various sizes. Landowners should look on their property for unusually shaped dark grey or black rocks that are denser than average rocks.
Frank Florian thinks the search for the meteorite is at the mercy of Mother Nature.
"As soon as the snow falls, there's no chance of finding anything until springtime," said Florian, community astronomer at the Telus World of Science.
The brightness of the fireball may have misled people into thinking it fell close by, Florian said.
While hundreds of people reported seeing the meteor, Chris Herd is anxiously awaiting a report from someone who found a piece of it.
"The sooner it's picked up the better, for scientific reasons," said Herd, a University of Alberta associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences.
Meteorites that aren't quickly recovered become weathered and rusty and less representative of their original composition and elemental make-up.
The vast majority of meteorites come from an asteroid belt of rocks between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, he said.
Rocks are liberated from their belt every now and then when the orbit of Jupiter disrupts the orbit of the rocks and sends propels them towards the sun. Meteors can spend millions of years going around the sun before eventually being drawn into the gravitational pull of the Earth.
Robert Haag has made a living for the past 30 years buying and selling meteorites and other space debris that has fallen to Earth.
The American meteorite collector is offering $10,000 to anyone who can locate the first one-kilogram chunk of the meteorite that fell in the region Thursday evening.He says the people with the best chance of finding the fireball are the ones who heard the sonic boom made by the falling meteorite chunks.
"If you hear that, then you're probably within 30 kilometres of it," Haag said.
Even luckier would be to see the physical evidence firsthand.
"The best thing you can hope for," Haag added, "is someone saying, 'What the hell happened to my tractor?' or 'Who put a hole in my chicken coop?' "
The University of Calgary's Hildebrand said he guesses the rock might have dropped southwest of Manitou Lake in western Saskatchewan and he is heading to the area to speak with witnesses.
"Typically what we're able to do is to narrow it down to a township or two and then you (let the) landowners in those areas know they may have meteorites in their field," he said.