('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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