Talk:Bolide

Wilkes Land crater vs. Vredefort crater

The intrepretation of the structure sensed at Wilkes Land as a crater is too new and too controversial to flatly state that it is an impact crater and therefore relegates Vredefort to second place. That may well turn out to be the case, but it's just too early. From Nature.com:

"It could be the biggest impact ever found on Earth," says von Frese.

"It's possible, but it's not the interpretation that would top your list," says Ian Dalziel, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin. The region of dense rock is certainly circular, he says, but it could easily be volcanic rock that had welled up during normal geological activity: "You can find a lot of gravity anomalies like this." The roughly circular feature thought to be the rim of the crater may just be part of the normal variation in terrain in the area, he adds.

--Kbh3^rdtalk 02:40, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Merge proposal to meteoroid and meteorite

There is considerable overlap between the articles. Some parts seem to belong to meteoroid and others to meteorite Rsduhamel 16:38, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• Note: It was merged by 68.7.138.194 (Rsduhamel) with meteoroid and meteorite and made into a disambig page in this edit. - M0rphzone (talk) 20:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Word origin

Online Greek dictionaries don't seem to understand βολις. Translating missile or flash returns different Greek words. Rsduhamel 17:00, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

That definition of βολις seems to be from Strong's Greek Dictionary and according to him, it means "missile", "javelin", or "dart". And it's likely derived from the verb βάλλω (bállō - I cast, throw, rush, put, place, drop). Except Google Translate translates it as "buckshot", "sinker", or "vaccine". It's most likely an Ancient Greek word, not Demotic. In any case, it'll need to be verified. - M0rphzone (talk) 20:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

How recent is the use of bolide? It is obviously not of ancient Greek usage, so some history would be useful. It might also help to clarify that neither bolide nor superbolide are official terms, or even colloquially used by astronomers, and that they have only vague and undefined meanings.Royalcourtier (talk) 05:40, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Among meteor astronomers the term bolide and superbolide are common. The problem is that witnesses (and even cameras that are rapidly over exposed) are often not reliable enough to know if a fireball is truly bright enough to be a bolide or superbolide. Fireballs can as dim as Venus. -- Kheider (talk) 05:48, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Comparison with the Sun

It's fine to mention "apparent magnitude of -14," but it would be useful to mention the apparent magnitude of the Sun for comparison. —MiguelMunoz (talk) 07:15, 23 February 2013 (UTC)