near miss

[WX]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6505143.stm

[carioca1232001]

Scary !

I would have thought that by now, some 50 years after Sputnik
(´58), the space-time coordinates for satellite re-entry would be clockwork perfect.

[Brian Palmer]

We saw a meteor come down during the daytime a few years ago. A lot of other people in the area saw it too. It was quite spectacular. A flaming white light that sort of pulsed as it went across the sky just over the trees.

[John B]

and thats what they think it was now.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10431624

[WX]

I saw one come down over South Australia one night. I'm 99% sure it reached the ground, but it was some distance off. I was about 30 k west of Penola at the time.

[TimH]

maybe it was an Iraqi missile

[WX]

No, Iraq was a good guy back then...we all loved Saddam :D

[High C]

John Howard saved yer arse!

[WX]

Pardon?

[stevebaby]

John Howard saved yer arse!Too busy saving his own at the moment.

[Bob Adams]

The layover was prolonged enough to procure replacement underwear.

[willmarsh3]

I saw a really good one while driving across the American Legion bridge in the DC area in 1992 or 1993 a little after dark. The light from it must have caught my attention. I looked straight up. It was as bright as fireworks. As much as I dared to take my eye off the road, I watched it streak toward the east and break up into several smaller pieces.

[The Bigfella]

Just saw the International Space Station go over - magic!

[hansp77]

Meteorite trivia I suppose,
In an Earth Sciences subject I am doing at the moment (just for kicks) we were examining all sorts of different meteorites.
One of the most boring looking but most interesting was a sample of the Murchison Meteorite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_meteorite), which is a Carbonaceous Chondrite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonaceous_chondrite).
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5e/Murchison-meteorite-ANL.jpg/300px-Murchison-meteorite-ANL.jpg

These (rarest of) meteorites are black carbonaceous lumps that apparantly formed, without significant heating, out of solar nebula not long after the big bang- thus representing a unique insight into the origins of our and other solar systems (along with some of the building blocks for life)...
The thing is they have all sorts of interesting organic substances in them,

The CM meteorite from Murchison, Victoria has over 70 extraterrestrial amino acids and other compounds including carboxylic acids, hydroxy carboxylic acids, sulphonic and phosphonic acids, aliphatic, aromatic and polar hydrocarbons, fullerenes, heterocycles, carbonyl compounds, alcohols, amines and amides.

As could be guessed a lot of these substances are very volatile.
My lecturer who helped collect the samples (it was a very visable meteorite, witnessed by a lot of people as it broke up/exploded in the sky) said the smell of it when fresh was quite remarkable. Something like turpentine.

He invited us to take it out of the jar and smell it (it still has retained some smell).

that is is the smell of 4 Billion years
that is the smell of the big bang
he dramatically said.

The smell to me was very unique, and hard to describe. Dark, mysterious, extremely evocative...

anyway.
Trivia.
Anyone by any chance smelled a carbonaceous chondrite?:o