Did a Meteorite Hit the Capital of Nicaragua?

[spacevudo]

A mysterious explosion that rocked Nicaragua on Saturday night, creating a 39ft-wide (12 metre) crater, appears to have been caused by a small meteorite. And authorities in the region believe the meteorite was in fact a shard of rock from the 2014 RC ‘pitbull’ asteroid that soared past Earth over the weekend.

link deleted by mod

[Ophiolite]

Based on the information in the link I should say that the crater appears not to have been caused by a small meteorite. And linking it to the 2014RC is, in my view, ridiculous. The authorities in the region, sound like authorities on getting reelected (i.e.politicians) rather than authorities on meteorites. However, thank you for an interesting link.

[imatfaal]

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Moderator Note

 

spacevudo

 

Stop posting links to the same website. Introduce topics you wish to discuss - not in order to drive traffic to your website. If you continue to create threads in order to advertise your site you will be banned.

 

 

 

You can read the story here

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2747614/Was-39ft-wide-crater-caused-pitbull-asteroid-Nicuraguan-impact-caused-rogue-shard.html

 

And at various other places. I have chosen the Mail (much against my better judgement) as it seems to be the source of the text in the OP

[Enthalpy]

I doubt very much about any link with 2014RC. Or at least, about Earth's gravity splitting a meteorite from 2014RC. This would have happened near Earth, so the fragment wouldn't have already deviated enough when passing by Earth. To the very least, it demands an other planet to split 2014RC much before. In addition, I can't imagine a single rock detaching from 2014RC; much more, tidal forces disintegrate small celestial bodies, as was seen near Jupiter.

 

Was it a meteorite impact? No trail was observed, but maybe the impact was vertical. I considered a hypervelocity weapon, since a standard explosive shell making such a crater would have blown away much more vegetals at the surface. Though, witnesses report the fall of a liquid together with dust - the soil doesn't look like the source of this liquid, which would then have fallen with the object.

 

What liquid? A celestial body can bring ice - I expected that only farther from our Sun. A satellite carries propellants, which are usually nitrogen tetroxide and some hydrazine; both stink, and I have not read witnesses telling it. A hypervelocity weapon may carry some rests of propellants, more if the launch failed, and usually as stinky as onboard a satellite.

 

If a satellite had fallen, I'd expect some more parts to be discovered over time around the impact.

 

This resembles the impact in an Andine country few years ago, but there the inhabitants reported the bad smell and cattle got sick.

[Moontanman]

I doubt that crater was caused by a meteorite, it's rather small is the main reason, a rock falling from space small enough to make that crater would slow down too much to cause a crater from interacting with the air and should be visible in the crater. It looks more like an underground explosion. Is there a minimum size for a crater on the earth due to atmospheric drag? If you drop a person from 500 feet and one from 5000 feet they both hit the ground at the same speed.

[Enthalpy]

Trying to estimate a minimum size that brakes little through the atmosphere:

 

The hypersonic drag is less than density*V²

The path is longer than a vertical fall

Both shall compensate an other, ah.

 

Then I can compare directly the kg/m² of the object and the atmosphere, to deduce if much air mass brakes the object mass.

 

The atmosphere weighs ~100,000Pa or 10,000kg/m², so an object with density 5,000kg/m³ must be 2m long to punch unbraked through the atmosphere.

 

This favours your doubt a lot. A 2m rock would have made a bigger crater. That's only a rough estimation though.

 

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Now, if the object does brake before the impact: I take the opposite situation, where its speed results from aerodynamic fall only.

 

5,000kg/m³ * pi*D³/6 * 10m/s² = 0.3 * 1kg/m³ * pi*D²/4 * V²/2

200,000*D = V²

 

still 150m/s for 0.1m, 260m/s for 0.3m, 470m/s for 1m

 

Somewhere between the two last figures would fit the crater size, intuitively.

 

Meteorites use to melt a few surface mm.

[GeeKay]

Just a suggestion: could the alleged meteorite once have been a moon of the Pitbull asteroid, but which was pulled away by Earth's gravity? I've no idea if Pitball ever came close enough to pass within Earth's Hill Sphere, but I do recall a close flyby made fairly recently (2013?) by another asteroid, which definitely had a moon, albeit a very small one.