News, Suspected meteorite crashes into rice field in India (reader, format)
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A suspected meteorite about the size of a football has crashed into a paddy field in a village in eastern India.
The rock, which landed in Mahadeva village in Bihar, weighed nearly 13 kilograms and was found to have magnetic properties, the state's Chief Minister's office said in a statement.
Being pedantic, news sites can be idiots. A meteorITE can't crash into the ground unless someone finds one and drops it. It is a meteor until it strikes Earth, and a meteorite AFTER it has landed. Even the Superman comics in the 1950s were able to get it right, ferPeteSake!
It looks like something which has only 'flown' a couple of hundred metres, not something which came from outer space. If it came from there, wouldn't it have a much larger impact crater?
Being pedantic, news sites can be idiots. A meteorITE can't crash into the ground unless someone finds one and drops it. It is a meteor until it strikes Earth, and a meteorite AFTER it has landed. Even the Superman comics in the 1950s were able to get it right, ferPeteSake!
If you want to be pedantic, it is only a meteor from the moment it enters the atmosphere until impact with the surface. Before that, it is a meteoroid. If you want to be very precise, the object itself is never a meteor - which technically refers solely to the visible streak, or fireball, made by the passage of a meteoroid through the atmosphere.
But I'll refrain from flinging the 'idiot' at those unfamiliar with these precise definitions.
If you want to be pedantic, it is only a meteor from the moment it enters the atmosphere until impact with the surface. Before that, it is a meteoroid. If you want to be very precise, the object itself is never a meteor - which technically refers solely to the visible streak, or fireball, made by the passage of a meteoroid through the atmosphere.
But I'll refrain from flinging the 'idiot' at those unfamiliar with these precise definitions.
I'm very happy to use the word idiot in a very specific manner - aimed at those in the media who get paid to write copy and headlines have a responsibility to the readership to be accurate. If they can't meet that standard, they don't need to be there, they should not be paid. Their wages should be instead donated to teachers who have to correct their piles of dog poo and try to teach kids to do better. I hope the worst offenders have a meteoric fall.
The common person on the street doesn't deserve such chiding, partly because those looked up to as authoritative sources have failed them in the very thing journalism is supposed to do; be informative and provide a more educated reporting of events.
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