{"id":10522,"date":"2011-12-22T21:19:36","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T21:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2011\/12\/22\/namibian-mystery\/"},"modified":"2011-12-22T21:19:36","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T21:19:36","slug":"namibian-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/22\/namibian-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Namibian Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A strange 1.1 meter circumfrence hollow metallic ball appears to have fallen from space, or somewhere, onto Namibia.  The pertinent facts:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The hollow ball with a circumference of 1.1 metres (43 inches) was found near a village in the north of the country some 750 kilometres (480 miles) from the capital Windhoek, according to police forensics director Paul Ludik.<\/p>\n<p>Locals had heard several small explosions a few days beforehand, he said.<br \/>\nWith a diameter of 35 centimetres (14 inches), the ball has a rough surface and appears to consist of &#8220;two halves welded together&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It was made of a &#8220;metal alloy known to man&#8221; and weighed six kilogrammes (13 pounds), said Ludik.<\/p>\n<p>It was found 18 metres from its landing spot, a hole 33 centimetres deep and 3.8 meters wide.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/afp\/article\/ALeqM5jsNmCG-1OfkofGh9URvt1h_V-_8g?docId=CNG.6851377f0c77d5cfe1c2a1e06c165a21.411\">source<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How do we explain this?  Well, there are a couple of places to start.  For one, it is simply true that stuff falls on Namibia.  I&#8217;m not sure if there is any official count of this, but Namibia probably has  the highest frequency per land mass of notable impacts of a sufficiently recent nature to have left known craters.  Part of this, of course, is the fact that if you hit Namibia with a space rock, the hole it makes will not erode or become otherwise obscured as it would be in a place with, say, water, or with plants that actually grow, and so on. Namibia&#8217;s National Rock is a a huge meteorite, one of the largest known.  So this space ball is kind of run of the mill.<\/p>\n<p>Another explanation that I just want to mention quickly and then dismiss, but that one must keep in the back of one&#8217;s mind: Namibia was the site of a war that went on a very long time.  War junk is around and turns up now and then. It is impossible to avoid thinking of mines or other explosive thingies  when hearing about &#8220;explosions&#8221; followed by a ball of metal hitting the ground.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that &#8220;space balls&#8221; have been found in before.  In fact, a check of Google for <em>&#8220;Space ball&#8221; metalic hollow<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?gcx=c&#038;sourceid=chrome&#038;client=ubuntu&#038;channel=cs&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;q=%22space+ball%22#sclient=psy-ab&#038;hl=en&#038;client=ubuntu&#038;hs=qCb&#038;channel=cs&#038;tbs=cdr:1%2Ccd_min%3A12%2F3%2F2002%2Ccd_max%3A11%2F8%2F2011&#038;source=hp&#038;q=%22space+ball%22+metalic+hollow&#038;pbx=1&#038;oq=%22space+ball%22+metalic+hollow&#038;aq=f&#038;aqi=&#038;aql=&#038;gs_sm=e&#038;gs_upl=15499l17305l1l17514l14l12l0l0l0l0l251l1959l1.7.4l12l0&#038;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&#038;fp=a1bc1589ec616832&#038;biw=1279&#038;bih=711\">yields abundant and interesting results<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that  smaller but more numerous balls fell on New Zealand quite a few years ago, and were identified as parts of a Soviet rocket.  They do indeed look like Hydrogen or Oxygen tanks.  Maybe this ball that fell on Nambia was part of Apollo 13!?!?<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a YouTube video pertaining to the New Zealand case:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"284\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JS6aA5NxO8Q\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Assuming reports of explosions were true and related, it is interesting to consider what that was caused by. The impact? Reentry?<\/p>\n<p>Poor little Namibia.  Let&#8217;s just hope it doesn&#8217;t come to this:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"284\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ygE01sOhzz0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A strange 1.1 meter circumfrence hollow metallic ball appears to have fallen from space, or somewhere, onto Namibia. The pertinent facts:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-2JI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}