Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => General Discussion => Topic started by: BoredVirulence on March 02, 2015, 10:22:39 pm
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Lets suppose a meteor falls from the sky of considerable size, suppose its landing is equivalent to several tons of TNT. Lets also suppose the meteor also makes contact with a man before making contact with the ground.
When does it become a meteorite? When the man explodes into gore? When the gore covered meteor slams into the ground? Or does the act of touching the ground rewrite history, and it always was a meteorite?
I don't know why, but this question is haunting me.
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If it is on a trajectory to hit the ground, it is a meteorite. If the trajectory would never hit the ground but passes through a person, it's a meteor. If the impact with the person changes its trajectory to the ground. It becomes a meteorite.
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According to wikipedia:
"A meteorite is a solid piece of debris, from such sources as asteroids or comets, that originates in outer space and survives its impact with the Earth's surface. It is called a meteoroid before its impact."
"A meteor or "shooting star" is the passage of a meteoroid or micrometeoroid into the Earth's atmosphere, incandescent from air friction and shedding glowing material in its wake sufficiently to create a visible streak of light."
So its:
A meteorite as soon as it hits the ground (presuming that it survives).
A meteor while its its visible in the atmosphere.
A meteoroid before it hits the ground (note that it can be both a meteor and meteoroid at once).
A Earth-grazing fireball if it goes through the atmosphere and returns to space again.
The man's presence is completely irrelevant to what its called, no matter what the meteoroid does to him.