Allen Thomson wrote:
It has a large ballistic coefficient? Remember, ICBM RVs with large
ballistic coefficients entering the atmosphere slower than most
meteors arrive at the surface at a considerable angle.

http://img.rtvslo.si/upload/Svet/kwajalein_show.jpg
http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2005/ICBM01.jpg


Yeah, but this object is about the size of a pack of cards according to
the report, even if it's a nickel-iron, it's not going to be more than
four or five pounds in weight, and it won't be streamlined either.
The MIRVs in the photos are heavy and streamlined, and are coming in so
fast that they are ablating all the way to impact.
If it had been in anything other than free-fall, it should have blown a
hole right through the window and continued right through the desk and
floor, like a free-falling cannonball would. There are a lot of cases of
small free-falling meteorites doing considerable damage:
http://astro.wsu.edu/worthey/astro/h...r/strikes.html


"5. Donahue near-miss. Nov. 8, 1982, in Weathersfield,
Connecticutt. Robert and Wanda Donahue settled down for a quiet
evening watching television. About halfway through M*A*S*H, they
heard a loud crash from the front of the house. They ran into the
living room to find a hole in the ceiling and plaster dust and
smoke everywhere. Moving outside, they saw a hole in the roof.
They called the fire department and ten minutes later, a fireman
found a six-pound, five-inch meteorite under the dining room
table. The stone had ripped through the roof and living room
ceiling, bounced off a carpeted wooden floor (cracking a support
beam for the floor in the process), traveled up through the
ceiling a second time into the attic, came down through the
ceiling in the dining room, knocked over furniture and dented a
wall before coming to rest under the table. Six more small
fragments of the meteorite were later found in the Donahue's
vacuum cleaner, which Mrs. Donahue had used to tidy up the house a
bit before all the scientists and media arrived."


That's more like one would expect.
The amount of damage it did seems too small for an object in free-fall,
and it's strange angled impact with the house seems odd also. Unless it
hit something outside and then bounced through the window, I suspect
that somebody threw it through the window.
Why buy something as expensive as a meteorite just to toss it through a
window?
Simple...what do you think a meteorite with the news story about how it
hit a house would sell for on ebay?

Pat