Origins and Physical Properties of Meter-sized Earth Impactors
Supervisor: Dr. Peter Brown
Project Description (Abstract):
The purpose of this project is to use data publically posted at the NASA JPL Fireball data website (https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/) relating to bright bolides. This site reports speed, entry angle, energy and height of meter-sized impactors disintegrating in the Earth’s atmosphere as detected by US Government sensors over the last 20 years. From this information, details of the disintegration of these meter-sized objects will be estimated by comparing measurements to model predictions. In all, some 600+ events will be statistically analysed and correlations examined between their apparent strength, orbit, energy and entry parameters. Interpretation of these data using several in-house ablation models (such as the Triggered Progressive Fragmentation Model and the Fragmentation Model) will provide the framework for interpretation of these data. Additional data from other sources (infrasound, satellite measurements etc) will also be explored in an effort to augment the basic kinematic data from the JPL database and provide more constraints for models. The ultimate goal is to identify different physical populations of small near Earth object impactors, understand their original source populations and make inferences about their internal structure.
The student will scour multiple online data sources for additional information (infrasound, seismic, satellite) related to each JPL fireball event. This additional data will then be combined with the JPL data to provide a complete set of measurements concerning the speed, energy deposition and breakup altitude of the event. From these constraints, the student will then run existing Fortran and Matlab codes to attempt to match these observations and interpret the dataset. Additional data reduction using matlab, Python and/or C will also be required.
Published on and maintained in Cascade CMS.
