A space charge model for electrophonic bursters

From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sat Dec 29 2001 - 07:29:07 MST


('Hearing meteors' of a different type)

http://xxx.uni-augsburg.de/abs/astro-ph/0112376
Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0112376

From: Luigi Foschini <foschini@tesre.bo.cnr.it>
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 13:53:49 GMT (11kb)

A space charge model for electrophonic bursters

Authors: M. Beech, L. Foschini
Comments: 5 pages, 2 figures. An error in Fig. 2 has been corrected in
astro-ph/0012258
Journal-ref: Astronomy and Astrophysics 345 (1999) L27

     The sounds accompanying electrophonic burster meteors are
     characteristically described as being akin to short duration
     ``pops'' and staccato--like ``clicks''. As a phenomenon distinct
     from the enduring electrophonic sounds that occasionally accompany
     the passage and ablation of large meteoroids in the Earth's lower
     atmosphere, the bursters have proved stubbornly difficult to
     explain. A straightforward calculation demonstrates that in
     contradistinction to the enduring electrophonic sounds, the
     electrophonic bursters are not generated as a consequence of
     interactions between the meteoroid ablation plasma and the Earth's
     geomagnetic field. Here we present a novel and hitherto unrecorded
     model for the generation of short--duration pulses in an
     observer's local electrostatic field. Our model is developed
     according to the generation of a strong electric field across a
     shock wave propagating in a plasma. In this sense, the
     electrophonic bursters are associated with the catastrophic
     disruption of large meteoroids in the Earth's atmosphere. We
     develop an equation for the description of the electric field
     strength in terms of the electron temperature and the electron
     volume density. Also, by linking the electron line density to a
     meteor's absolute visual magnitude, we obtain a lower limit to the
     visual magnitude of electrophonic burster meteors of
     $M_{\mathrm{v}}\approx -6.6$, in good agreement with the available
     observations.

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