3 foot block of ice falls in Oakland

LINK

LOMA LINDA, Calif. (AP) -- A 2-foot-long chunk of ice fell from the sky and tore through a college gymnasium roof, authorities said.

No one was in the Drayson Center at Loma Linda University when the slab of opaque ice hit on Thursday morning, although several people were outside.

Here is a similar story from California. I dont think they have much of a chance of narrowing it down to one airplane if that is truly where it came from.

This ice was opaque and not blue, BTW.

JDub

Thanks BlueTileSpook! I was wondering when another chunk would come up in the news. I was searching for more info on it also and found this link:

www.kesq.com...

LOMA LINDA, Calif. Somebody call Chicken Little, because the sky is falling in Loma Linda.

This first sentence struck me because today, as I was resting...my son comes up to me and says just out of the blue, "Mommie? The sky is falling!" And I say, oh you heard that from chicken little? he says, "no mommie. I just know." So I just sit there like, wondering about what he just said and if the sky is truly falling; if something was going to soon fall again.

This just reminded me:

That same time rejoiced Jesus in the spirit, and said: I confess unto thee father: Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast opened them to the babes. Even so father, for so pleased it thee. All things are given me of my father. And no man knoweth who the son is, but the father: neither who the father is, save the son, and he to whom the son will show him.

Hmmm...just was curious to see what the definition of sky was:
Main Entry: 1sky
Pronunciation: 'skI
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural skies
Etymology: Middle English, cloud, sky, from Old Norse sky cloud; akin to Old English scEo cloud
1 : the upper atmosphere or expanse of space that constitutes an apparent great vault or arch over the earth
2 : HEAVEN 2
3 a : weather in the upper atmosphere b : CLIMATE

So could we say, the weather in the upper atmosphere is falling?

God Bless

I think it is frozen gray poo that they dump from the saucers when it gets too heavy for them. Smart of the little guys to freeze it though to keep the stink down. Myself I wouldn't drink or taste that water man

here's some good reading:

Earth's Atmosphere

The thermosphere starts just above the mesosphere and extends to 600 kilometers (372 miles) high. The temperatures go up as you increase in altitude due to the Sun's energy. Temperatures in this region can go as high as 1,727 degrees Celsius. Chemical reactions occur much faster here than on the surface of the Earth. This layer is known as the upper atmosphere.

God Bless

That is a really interesting article about Loma Linda...I'm only an hour away. It's tempting to go check it out.

One really fast way to tell if this ice comes from space or just the upper atmosphere is to check the core tempurature of it. If the tempurature is below -50 then there is a good chance that it is from space. If the tempurature is above -50 then it is almost certainly from the Earth.

Tempuratures on Earth are rare to find below -50, but easy to find in space.

I wonder if ice would fall faster than other objects of the same density. We all know there is almost no friction on ice, thus we all avoid walking or driving on it. Would that lack of friction have the same application slipping through our atmosphere?

Is there anyone here willing to conduct such experiments here in the desert of California? I'll work the ground if you've got the airplane and you're willing to drop a few items.

This stuff keeps happening more frequently, I'm going to buy a tank and drive it everywhere. On the golf course, in my yard... I'll just hop out of the tank nervously and quickly make my putt, then it's back in the tank. You'll see me darting to and from the tank, wherever I go.

Troy

Did some more surfing and found this article from the June 1992 issue of Omni:
Space ice - large chunk of ice allegedly from outer space falls to Earth

One of the scientists, Victor Fulda, an environmental chemist in Maryland, found that the "ice bomb" contained peculiarly large quantities of silicon, strontium, and barium--all of which are not normally present in drinking water. "I'm willing to safely say that it's not water from an airplane," Fulda agreed.

The other sample went to Robert Seal, a geologist at the United States Geological Survey office in Reston, Virginia, who found that the ice was isotopically identical to atmospheric precipitation, strongly suggesting a terrestrial origin.

God Bless

So you are saying that two scientists found two different results for each of the divided sample. Either way nobody has explained how a big chunk of ice can be generated in the environment and then rain down on the earth.

Speaking of golf courses...here's an incident of ice fall in Japan reported on December 21, 2005:
Ice Chunk Falls from sky in Japan

TOKYO - A disc-shaped piece of ice of unknown origin plummeted from the sky onto a golf course near Tokyo Wednesday, narrowly missing players on the fairway but causing no injuries, police said.

I'm only quoting pieces of the articles that stand out to me which could explain what's going on. Here's another website: The Ice is Falling! The Ice is Falling!

The fact is, no one knows for certain where this ice comes from or how it is formed. For now, it is just one more Earth mystery.

God Bless

A 3-foot diameter cube or ball of ice falling from the sky? I am having a real hard time figuring out where the piece of ice can sit on a flight surface on the plane (presumably joined to other ice 3 feet thick) without that plane crashing. The drag on the fuselage, not to mention the weight. The Bernoulli air flow would be greatly disrupted. No way that came from a plane.

I saw the Loma Linda story on the morning news yesterday here in oc. The anchor people were saying "oh yea its gotta be from a plane, yeah the lavatory" and stuff like that (stupid people trying to sound smart, that how all our anchors are).

Yeah...shows how much anchors know. This is from India - Jan 28.06:
Ice chunk from sky sets village aflutter

KOLKATA: A huge chunk of ice that apparently fell from the sky in a West Bengal village caused a flutter in the area even as weather experts dismissed such phenomenon as absurd.

Last night, I overheard on my mother's television a briefing on channel 5 that there was going to be an article written in the Chronicle about these two chunks of falling ice. Good thing I overheard because here is the article:
Falling ice perplexes scientists - Theories abound after 2 chunks land in state in a week

God Bless

Being an ex-aviation guy, I would like to know where on a plane that people think a block of ice this size could possibly form?

The lavoratory panel on any civilian aircraft is at the most 1 foot by 1 foot by 6 inches deep. The blue water that may leak out of the doughnut is certainly not enough to make a 3X3X2 Foot block of ice and it would be blue if it were. The only area I can even conceivably think that is large enough to allow this to happen is in the landing gear bay, but that brings up other problems.

First how is that much water getting in the bay? Second how long was the flight that it allowed such a huge block of ice to form? Third, while the bay may be large enough, there is not that much clearance between the folded gear and the edges of the compartment, so this block should have had the gear incased inside of it. Fourth, most bays are not sealed so tight as to be water proof, thus that pooling water would have just run out of the compartment and down the side of the aircraft.

So where in the plane, and how, do the folks that think this came from an aircraft suggest that it occurred?

Ok, I confess. It's been me all along. I built this really cool catapult in my back yard and I've just been toying around with it. Apparently, it's got really good range, but the targeting is something to be desired.

I originally built it for water balloons, but they kept breaking in launch, so I thought to try freezing them. It would seem that the balloon is not surviving the trip.

If the ice is pure water, that suggests it's natural and not a product of artificial sources. I would say especially if the ice fell before man was flying airplanes. The link
paranormal.about.com...

repeated above stated one chunk of ice that fell weighed about half a ton. Since this was in the 1800's, to make this ice sound like it came from an artificial source one would have to speculate that someone invented time travel and had a large tank of water on board and decided to travel back to the 1800's and had to dump it on the population below for one reason or another. I think that one came naturally from space.

If the ice doesn't stink when it melts, I believe it's more likely to have come from space. I'm curious though how well a round ice ball would show up on radar and how big it would have to be before getting detected and how fast it would melt. At high speeds it may not have time to melt unless it blew up IMO.

Another interesting article on the second ice fall:

Falling ice perplexes scientists:
Theories abound after 2 chunks land in state in a week


[edit on 16-4-2006 by loam]

Like I said, it's probably a energy transfer reaction. The energy snaps out into space, and with such a rapid energy loss the moisture in the area rapidly condenses. The bigger the energy loss, the greater the amount of ice. Like how tornadoes always produce large amounts of hail. Those things are essentialy huge energy vortices sucking that # out into space.

My personal thanks to the contributors of this thread. THIS STUFF is the reason I came to ATS in the first place. When I get done posting I'll be voting the originator "way above."

I really enjoyed the articles loam posted--Thanks!!

I didn't realized there have been TWO falls in a week.

I laughed out loud when I read that one theory blames the falls on "Global Warming."



That explains things about as well as my own theory of an "Iranian Ice Beam!"

The one problem that I see with the cloudless hail theory is....

If these blocks of ice are forming in the upper atmosphere, then why is it that only one falls to the earth? It would make sense that there would be several or perhaps even hundreds of blocks of ice that would fall within a certain vicinity of each other.

In my opinion, the fact that there is only one block here and one there and then days apart voids the giant cloudless hail theory.

The more that I read the theories about this, the more I think that these are mini comets.

Here is some space data that has been realized and estimated based on observations within the last 20-30 years...

It is estimated by observations that there are roughly 1000 asteroids that are 100 meters or more in diameter that cross earth's orbit close enough to be a threat sometime in the future. It could be millions of years before such orbits synchronize enough to be a serious threat. At this current time nearly 800 of them have been identified and determined that there there are only 2 that pose a risk in the next 100 years. One threatens in 2029 or 2036 and the other threatens in 2102, but this discussion is not about those.

The number of smaller asteroids increases by a multiple of 8 each time you cut the diameter specs in half, so...

50 meters diameter.....8,000 asteroids that cross earth's orbit
25 meters ...................64,000 asteroids
13 meters ...................500,000 and so on

For a note on this, it is believed that very few meteors smaller than 30 meters survive entry into earth's atmosphers to impact. There are several factors...metal meteors stand a better chance, a steeper angle of entry gives a meteor a better chance if it does not deflect off of the atmosphere. Slower moving meteors stand a better chance of survival because the pressure of entry to earth's atmosphere is less. Fast moving meteors stand little chance of surviving the atmosphere because of intense friction.

Now the number of comets 100 meters or larger that pose a threat to earth sometime in the future seems to be about 1/20 to 1/10th the number of asteroids. This would put the number at around 50-100 The same principle would hold true for the smaller diameters of comets as does with asteroids.

This would suggest....
50 meters diameter......400-800 comets that cross earth's orbit
25 meters.....................3,000-6,000
13 meters.....................20,000-50,000
6 meters.......................200,000-400,000

Something that I think is important to consider with comets or chunks of ice in space as they enter the earth's atmosphere...

1. Ice meteors would not generate nearly as much friction as rock or metal meteors. Therefore, smaller ice meteors will impact the earth's surface more often than metal or rock meteors.
2. Ice meteors are only about 1/7th as heavy as rock or metal meteors, so the atmosphere of the earth would be able to slow their momentum 7 times faster than a rock or metal meteor, thus increasing the probability by 7 for it to impact.
3. Evidence of an ice meteor will only last a limited amount of time. The ice will probably melt within a few days at most. The crater will not be as severe as one made by a metal or rock meteor because of its' weight and thus will not gain much notice....much like the crater left by the 3 ft. chunk of ice in Oakland. That hole could easily have been thought to be a pothole or sinkhole if someone had not witnessed the landing.

Unless further and more convincing evidence is presented, I am thus far persuaded that this ice fragment was likely a mini-comet that was about the size of a large automobile before entry into earth's atmosphere.

I noticed that bit about the crater, too. A freshly plowed field, especially at planting, is often extremely finely tilled, especially for wheat or hay. A crater in that type of farmland might not otherwise even register a noticible depression on pavement or in a roadside ditch.

I can imagine that this phenomenon might be much more common, but that it happens over the ocean or in wilderness areas where no one notices it, or immediately writes it off as vandalism, airplanes, etc. Besides, except for downtown or in rural areas, most humans in North America are either in buildings or automobiles for much of their lives. Something like this might fall at 10:30 A.M in a suburb (when everyone is at work or school) and go completely unnoticed.

I confess that my initial reaction was "an ice-meteor would melt from the heat," but I am now convinced that the variables are wide-ranging enough that it's possible for ice meteors to impact at low velocity.

Perhaps many of them arrive as slush or groups of droplets, and are thus written off as flocks of birds, etc.