Incoming meteorite caught on film

A norwegian skydiver caught an incoming meteorite on film that nearly hit him in 2012.

http://www.nrk.no/viten/skydiver-nearly-struck-by-meteorite-1.11646757

Thanks for sharing and very interesting imo. And a lucky guy as well that he didn't get hit by the rock. Beside this "dark flight" of a meteorite seems also interesting and that could mean that many "dark flights" are also happening or happened somewhere else.

It would make sense. The only reason we see the "explosive" versions of meteors is because of the speed differential between the meteor and Earth. It only makes sense that a good percentage of them would have a much lower differential, and therefore wouldn't produce the energetic reactions we're all familiar with.

Or it could be that the size matters. The smaller ones might not need to burn. I saw a very small one falling and it was only very faint streak of light and it took only a moment. It was more like a very faint flash. What i found was a silvery chunk, partly molten only half inch in diameter and it was not even hot only warm but it took me few minutes to locate it. But sure it could kill someone.I can imagine that these smaller rocks are mostly overlooked and what people see burning in the sky are much larger ones perhaps at least few meters in diameter.

That's interesting and could be damage control, because the norwegian meteorite network claims now it was not a meteorite, but a stone from a parachute:

Let’s get straight to the conclusion. The good news: The crowdsourcing was a success. The bad news: There is no meteorite. It was a rock accidentally packed into the parachute. But how? It was a scenario considered from the beginning and it kept haunting us until the time we went public, as Anders told in the TV interview. Despite much effort, we saw no way to reconcile this scenario with the videos. The rock was clearly falling from well above the parachute. It did not seem to accelerate as if released from the parachute. It fell several seconds after the parachute had fully deployed. So what did we miss? The riddle quickly cracked under the pressure of the numerous fresh eyes now looking at the problem. Several people were able to point out the important clue that made the pieces fall into place.

We think we can reconstruct what happened: A pebble, a few cm in size at most, was accidentally caught inside the parachute at the landing site after the previous jump. Then the parachute was packed on a clean floor and the pebble was not noticed. Then Anders made the jump with the stowaway. This is a wingsuit dive and he’s travelling fast northwards at an downward angle of approximately 40 degrees. When he releases the parachute, the wind catches it and it shoots out to the south of him. The parachute is held back by the cords, but the pebble is not. The pebble is now increasingly getting further south and further above Anders. However, the parachute then slows Anders down, he makes a 250 degree clockwise rotation and at this moment the pebble happens overtake him. It had now been falling for a few seconds and was no longer accelerating much.

Click to expand...

_http://norskmeteornettverk.no/wordpress/?p=1497

Or it was networking since several thousand watched the video? The problem I see is, that the video got viral and even a lot of mainstream media reported it and is maybe the reason to withdraw.

I would have thought that even small rocks would burn on impact with Earth's atmosphere, but I'm not sure on this. A search on the net pulls up NASA first up (note the spin on the rarity of devastating impacts): ;)

[quote author=NASA]
What Are The Differences Between An Asteroid, Comet, Meteoroid, Meteor and Meteorite?

Asteroid: A relatively small, inactive, rocky body orbiting the Sun.
Comet: A relatively small, at times active, object whose ices can vaporize in sunlight forming an atmosphere (coma) of dust and gas and, sometimes, a tail of dust and/or gas.
Meteoroid: A small particle from a comet or asteroid orbiting the Sun.
Meteor: The light phenomena which results when a meteoroid enters the Earth's atmosphere and vaporizes; a shooting star.
Meteorite: A meteoroid that survives its passage through the Earth's atmosphere and lands upon the Earth's surface.

Size and Frequency

Every day, Earth is bombarded with more than 100 tons of dust and sand-sized particles.
About once a year, an automobile-sized asteroid hits Earth's atmosphere, creates an impressive fireball, and burns up before reaching the surface.
Every 2,000 years or so, a meteoroid the size of a football field hits Earth and causes significant damage to the area.

Only once every few million years, an object large enough to threaten Earth's civilization comes along. Impact craters on Earth, the moon and other planetary bodies are evidence of these occurrences.

Space rocks smaller than about 25 meters (about 82 feet) will most likely burn up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere and cause little or no damage.

If a rocky meteoroid larger than 25 meters but smaller than one kilometer ( a little more than 1/2 mile) were to hit Earth, it would likely cause local damage to the impact area.

We believe anything larger than one to two kilometers (one kilometer is a little more than one-half mile) could have worldwide effects. At 5.4 kilometers in diameter, the largest known potentially hazardous asteroid is Toutatis.

By comparison, asteroids that populate the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and pose no threat to Earth, can be as big as 940 kilometers (about 583 miles) across.

How is an Asteroid Orbit Calculated?

An asteroid's orbit is computed by finding the elliptical path about the sun that best fits the available observations of the object. That is, the object's computed path about the sun is adjusted until the predictions of where the asteroid should have appeared in the sky at several observed times match the positions where the object was actually observed to be at those same times. As more and more observations are used to further improve an object's orbit, we become more and more confident in our knowledge of where the object will be in the future.
[/quote]
_http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/overview/fastfacts.html#.U0_QsWthiK2