A Problem with Expert Advise

A couple of weeks ago I attended an interesting UFO symposium at the Kokomo Indiana south library. Indiana MUFON State Director Stuart Hill and I were speakers. Also present was former Indiana MUFON Chief Investigator Glen Means who spoke extensively about the Kokomo Boom of April 16, 2008. Glen was one of the first FIs on the scene. The boom is still a topic of great interest in the area and several people in the audience reported hearing it.

Now let me state right now I am NOT going to offer here a definitive or any other kind of explanation as to what happened that night. But there is a point or two...

Glen's talk was about his own investigation of the event. He rushed to the area from his home in Peru as soon as he heard about it. His police scanner was on the entire time. Glen quoted a dispatcher as saying “We're on the phone with a meteorologist and he says it was a meteor.” Everybody chuckles. A meteorologist is an expert on weather not meteors and why would they call a weatherman anyway when they should have called an astronomer or something. Maybe something funny is going on.

Maybe.

Or maybe they called exactly the right person.

A meteorologist is someone who studies and is expert on anything that is in the atmosphere or falls from the sky, like for example meteors. The things he studies include electrometeors, lightning, and hydrometeors, rain, snow, and hail. He also studies lithometeors which is any solid matter falling or carried through the sky. This included dust picked up by the wind, sandstorms, and space born rocks.

Someone who studies only meteors and meteoriticist es is called a meteoriticist.

So who are you going to call? It's eleven o clock at night and everyone is excited and wants answers NOW. Do you have the number of your local meteoriticist in your pocket? Do you even know what a meteoriticist is? Have you ever heard of one? On the other hand the guy on the local TV station is expert in atmospheric phenomena and he always tells you when to look for the Persied Meteor Shower. Where's the phone?

All of this started with Aristotle who wrote his treatise, "Meteorologica” , on climate and weather. This great work covered all knowledge on the subject of the day including the related subjects of geology, astronomy and oceanography. It was all lumped together and didn't get sorted out for centuries. The very existence of rocks that fall from the sky was still a matter of debate in the eighteenth century. Many scientists just couldn't grasp the idea that rocks could travel through space like planets do. Those who insisted that rocks do fall from the sky called them “meteors”, the Greek word for anything suspended or falling through the sky.

So just maybe the meteorologist gave the police a good and informed answer. Not necessarily the right answer, he wasn't there, but a meteor remains one possibility of what caused the boom that night..