A little more information Stony-iron, and sent shockwaves clear to Antarctica…
Russian Meteor…
by CJ | Feb 26, 2013 | Journal | 18 comments
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I don’t know if you’ve seen this wonderful guided tour of the International Space Station. It really gives you a feel for the place, and what living in space is like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW-k
Shockwaves clear to Antarctica from the impact? I am reminded of thumping a melon to see if it’s ripe yet.
No, from the air-burst!
except for hard rinded melons, I’ve always favored smelling the blossom end myself…
I have friends who are making preparations to go to Russia and search, and other acquaintances who live there and are already looking. There are some truly remarkable videos out there, some of which have captured the sonic boom and overpressure wave.
If I was in the area I’d sure be out looking…but I’ll bet they’d better stock up on hot dogs and I was there! tee shirts. That poor little city is due to be inundated with tourists…
Russians have hot dogs? … Somehow, hot dogs seem so quintessentially American, even though hamburgers and hot dogs are probably more German in origin. (IIRC, the idea was, several things like that came about at an American-hosted World’s Fair.) … Russians probably have very fine, very Russian hot dogs. 🙂 Now I’m curious. The Russian equivalents of Sauerkraut or chili, mustard, etc.? Do Russians like their hot dogs with something else?
I’m amused at myself. I never really thought about Russians having hot dogs, but they probably do. Sausages are an old, old food. — It occurs to me I know very little about Russian food. There are bound to be restaurants here in town.
(Valiantly attempting to avoid Freudian hot dog allusions, not quite succeeding.)
What I find interesting is that it was about 55m long and the asteroid everyone was ansy about was 150m long. Oh but if that one hit it would destroyed X, Y and Z. Seems as if the shock wave was the bigger problem and all I could think of was wow, this must have just what Tunguska was like in 1908.
Isn’t the rule something like twice the volume, four times the impact; three times the volume, eight times the impact? I know there’s a proper term for that, but I can’t dredge it up just now.
Well, and speed matters. Did we run over it or did it run over us? It came from the sunward side, which is one reason we didn’t see it. One guy made the point that meteors like this never hit the ground: their pressure shock overwhelms their cohesive strength, they heat up from friction and not being homogenous all the way through, they go boom somewhere short of groundfall and shower bits in a long trail, sort of like a huge traveling fruitbasket upset. OTOH, when you get one that measures in miles, with the bottom hitting the ground while the top is still in space, like the KT impact, I’m not sure where the boom starts, above the ground or not. Maybe it does: maybe when it reaches that altitude and the bow pressure has built up to the extent part of it is ready to blow, it just starts blowing, while the big rest of the mass is still coming down atop it. It could be why you don’t find big iron masses at the heart of these major craters.
I was of the impression that the meteor went boom because it was traveling at greater than Mach, just like jets go boom when they “break the sound barrier,” and that the boom helped break it up. Those who sell glass in that town are going to make some rubles off of this one.
Well, that’s certainly true, it does create a sonic boom. But it was a chondrite, a “stony iron” mixture of iron and, oh, the ones I’ve seen cut and polished generally had pretty yellow-green olivine crystals inside. The problem is that as it begins to get hot, the different “coefficient of expansion” between the excellent heat conducting metal, and the stoney bits causes it to fracture. Not good to crack when you’re above Mach 1! 😉
Meteor Crater in Arizona is a nice big hole. In the early 20th century some bright boy decided he’d make a mint by digging up the meteor — after all, there’s gotta be this huge chunk of iron. He never found any, but IIRC, there’s little bits all over outside the crater and actually outside the park. Just little slivers of iron. And what’s even cooler than the crater is as you drive up to this thing you see these undulations in the landscape which are shock wave ripples frozen in the surrounding rock.
You mean if the first train leaves Boston for Chicago going 50mph and the second leaves Boston for Chicago going 75mph as opposed to the first train leaving Boston for Chicago at 50mph and the second leaves Chicago for Boston at 75mph? That does indeed make a difference!
Tangentially Cyrillic: Font / type design. The Russian and Cyrillic comes in there eventually, read on, please.
In the 90’s, I had drawn a few fonts in Fontographer. But due to several unhappy circumstances, as far as I can tell, I don’t have a backup of those I can get to. Outdated media, lack of a directory listing for what’s on some, etc. So I’d have to redraw from scratch. — Though a Cherryh fan *very* kindly offered to help transfer files, if I do find a backup. (I was very surprised at the generosity, and that fan has a good reputation, trustworthy.)
I wanted a specific font design for a science fiction project, if/when I get it written. But I couldn’t find what I wanted. This is close, that is almost it, but not quite, too expensive, not all the glyphs, not the styles I need, and so on.
A while back, I did a “Chanur” logotype for my fan site, and this was fairly close to what I want. (Schadow font-family by Bitstream.)
Then there was discussion of CJ’s Rusalka series and other topics of interest for Russian. Since I love type and calligraphy, I’d seen the Cyrillic alphabet while growing up. Russian lettering and type have their own special design features, notably a preference for S-curves and arches. During the 1700’s and 1800’s, Russian type was influenced by Western European type such as Baskerville and Bodoni and early Clarendon / Egyptian designs, and so there is a typical “Russian” feel to their type. (But Russians, like any designers, took in all sorts of influences and tried things.)
Well, a couple of months ago, I sketched out some letters. Nice, heavy, industrial-strength letters, suitable for workhorse starships, merchanters and cargo haulers, and so on. Or modern-day heavy farming and construction equipment or your favorite pickup or van or 4WD vehicle. I liked these a lot. The sketches sat there. (And I’m now in another sketchbook, so I have to find the sketches again. One of two places.)
I got back to the science fiction design, still writing and designing, still wondering how much I can do in an ebook version. — And decided for sure I needed a better type option than what I have. — And the only way I see to do that, is to design a font-family, starting from those sketches.
There are nice influences from Russian Cyrillic letters in there, as well as Melior, Eurostile, and Clarendon. It feels like they’d be good on any starship in CJC’s stories. The letters have good feel and weight and a balance between high tech and low tech, white collar and blue collar.
However, what I sketched were square to wide letters, very bold display type. I also need body text weights, italics, and condensed (narrow) letters. So this is ambitious and time consuming, as much so as another design I had almost completed in the 1990’s.
I will be starting in on the new type design after some new sketches and vector graphics work to hone the design. (Or I may start in the new Fontographer upgrade I’d bought in January.)
I will want to look further about the Cyrillic alphabet, because I think this design would look good in Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic (and Irish Gaelic).
So … this is nowhere near an immediate thing, but I will be working at it. Eventually, the fonts will be available through a vendor such as MyFonts.com or elsewhere. — I thought you all might like to know that CJ’s, Jane’s, and Lynn’s books, and Russian lettering, had an influence on the design aesthetic.
(Heheh, when I do have something ready, I will be sure to let everyone know about it.)
Neat!
I love different fonts! I scrapbook and always look for interesting fonts to use for the journalling or as captions. Can’t wait to see it!
Off topic, kinda, but WOW!
http://www.giantkillerpandas.com/Cassini-Mission