Given all the nonsense about meteors causing the flood, I have decided to
put out on my web page a program that I wrote from a Sky and Telescope
article (Unfortunately I forget when it was published--somewhere back in
'93). Anyway, the program allows you to imput the radius of the meteor, the
type of meteor you want, the speed and the angle of descent into the
atmsophere. It will calculate the path through the atmosphere
(unfortunately it doesn't take into account the curvature of the earth and
its atmosphere but it is a good approximation). It also calculates the size
of the crater formed if the meteor hits the earth and the megatonnage of
When a meteor enters the atmosphere a pressure wave begins to move from the
outside to the inside of the meteor. If the pressure wave is greater than
the strength of the meteor, the meteor will break up in the atmosphere and
cause an airburst because all the small fragments decelerate rapidly
sending out a pressure wave which will be destructive. This is what
Tunguska did in June, 1908.The program calculates the breakup point for
each object. The breakup pressure for various types of objects entering the
atmosphere is different. If the meteor would break up it will send out a
blast wave which will destroy a wide area, but I have left that
uncalculated for now.
One draw back to the airblast calculation is that this is the maximum
energy per kilometer which is released. the real yield in the airburst is
much greater than what I calculate as it should be an integration of a
small part of the curve. I haven't figured out how to know when to start
the integration and when to end it.
The program shows just how much energy is released in a meteor strike and
contrary to recent YEC claims that meteors are not the solution to the
flood problem, one should consider how many megatons were released when the
observed craters were formed.
Anyway, the program is fascinating. If you give angles of ~5 degrees, the
meteor will bounce off the atmosphere as really occurs with low angles of
The program is at my website and can be downloaded from the bottom two
Place both the meteor file and the SVGA256.EXE file in the same directory.
Enter the command "Rename SVGA256.EXE SVGA256.BGI" and then type "meteor".
Answer the questions and the program should work. I won't guarantee that it
will work with every computer but it does with mine.
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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