Bowling-ball drop generates wide media attention

Experiments by Utah amateur astronomers seeking to discover how meteorites impact the Bonneville salt flats are drawing nationwide attention.

If the experimenters can figure out which areas of the salt flats are most likely to retain meteorites on top of the salt, they can patrol them to search for rare space rocks. They reason that these may be easy to spot on the bright white salt pan, much as scientists find meteorites on top of the snow in Antarctica.

Last Friday, a group of experimenters dropped a bowling ball from a Cessna airplane flying 800 feet above privately owned land near the salt flats, which are managed by the federal government.

The test run was intended to help them hone the experiments they would like to carry out on the flats themselves, if they can get permission from the government.

The substitute meteorite plowed into the frozen mud at 90 mph, spraying ejecta but staying in a shallow hole that it made. That was good news because it indicated a meteorite might not punch through the salt crust.

"It didn't bounce, which surprised me," said Patrick Wiggins, who piloted the Cessna.

Also a surprise was that the story was picked up by many media outlets. Paul Harvey talked about the test on his nationally syndicated radio program. The New York Times, station WLS in Chicago and several Web sites also ran articles on the drop.

Various individuals tracking the story said they found versions by the Associated Press, Cable News Network, "Broadcast News," Newsday and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Meanwhile, Wiggins said a major Eastern university has expressed interest in documenting the experiments.

"Future plans center around dropping different items from different altitudes onto different surfaces," he added.

One member of the group donated a series of solid metal spheres ranging from the size of a golf ball to a grapefruit, he added. "We hope to rig some device that will let us drop all of them at the same instant.

"We'll probably use a few potato-sized rocks as well."

Wiggins added that, just for fun, "we're not done with the bowling ball."

---

E-mail: bau@desnews.com