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It seems like the article has been updated: "Sources told AVweb Sunday that the focus of the investigation is on a weather balloon payload." This is far more li
by jjwiseman 1y ago
It seems like the article has been updated: "Sources told AVweb Sunday that the focus of the investigation is on a weather balloon payload." This is far more likely than a meteor.
- LeifCarrotson 1y agoMore likely, but still spectacularly unlucky. Space is big, but the upper atmosphere is pretty big, too! I understand that there are a lot of planes and they cover a lot of miles, and there are a lot of weather balloons too... but each windshield is merely tracing a 40cm high by 150cm wide rectangle across an entire country, through an airspace 12km tall covering 10 million square kilometers. My son brings his glove when we go to a game for the local minor league baseball team in case of a foul ball or home run, we've spent a couple dozen hours in seats near enough to the action to give it a chance...but that glove has not yet intersected with the path of a baseball in an environment that's significantly more target-dense. What's the probability that the path of a plane windshield randomly intersects with a weather balloon payload? I would have said it's negligible, but apparently not!
- recursive 1y agoConsider how many flights have been taken. If you had taken your son to that many baseball games, you'd probably have a shed full of baseballs by now.