VISITORS to the famous Bonneville salt flats in Utah are advised to keep a wary eye on the sky. Local amateur astronomers are planning to drop bowling balls from high-flying aircraft to simulate meteorite impacts.
Tired of pointing their telescopes at the skies, enthusiasts at the Salt Lake Astronomical Society recently went meteorite-hunting on the nearby salt flats, thinking that the blackened space rocks would show up starkly against the smooth, white surface. 鈥淲e found quite a lot of objects 鈥� rocks carried by flash floods from the mountains and shell cases from army training,鈥� says Kim Hyatt, an architect and member of the society. But no meteorites.
The astronomers realised they weren鈥檛 sure what to look for. Would a meteorite that had traced a blazing path to Earth just sit on the surface, or punch straight through the thick salt crust into the mud below? 鈥淲e decided to simulate an impact to find out,鈥� co-conspirator Patrick Wiggins told 快猫短视频. Dropping bowling balls out of an aeroplane at 3000 feet seemed a reasonable way to do that, he explains.
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When officials at the Utah branch of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the government agency in charge of the area, read about the experiment in the local newspapers, they responded anxiously. The flats are used for attempts on the land speed record, points out Bill White, a research scientist at the BLM. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want anything being dropped when there are folks out there.鈥� Hyatt and Wiggins are now preparing a report that the BLM will assess to decide if they are allowed to carry out their plan.
The group also hopes to drop shot-puts and rocks. Wiggins says they would try the experiment with a real meteorite, but are afraid they might lose it.
鈥淚t is a better model than no model,鈥� says Monica Grady, head of the meteorite collection at the National History Museum in London. But she thinks their search will be in vain. In the highly caustic, concentrated brine on the salt flats, iron-nickel meteorites would corrode quickly.
The chance of discovering any recently fallen space rocks on the comparatively small salt flats must be slim, but the astronomers are undaunted. 鈥淲e鈥檙e amateur scientists 鈥� this is just for fun,鈥� says Hyatt.