Large Meteorites Always Explode Before Impact

Large meteorites explode before impact. This is a conclusion we can draw from observed facts. We also know that small meteorites don't explode. They glow for an instance before they disappear from sight.

The conventional explanation for this is that small meteorites burn up before they can explode. Bigger ones take longer to heat up. They get very hot, and then they explode due to heat convection. However, this explanation doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Heat convection is too slow to explain the explosion. The meteorite's journey from ionosphere to ground lasts a few seconds, so the meteorite would be glowing hot at its front, but cool in its center and back. The heat would melt the rock at its front, but it wouldn't explode.

Looking at the observed facts, we see that meteorites glow all over. They don't just glow at their front, and their light is an intense white. They look like ball lightning, as if their surfaces are covered in electrical sparks, which suggests an electrical explanation to why they glow, and why they explode.

Left out of the conventional explanation is the fact that Earth's electrical potential between ground and ionosphere is a whopping 300,000 volt. This means that an incoming rock will have to equalize this potential on its way through the atmosphere, and the larger the rock, the harder it is to do this because discharge is a surface phenomenon, while charge is a function of volume.

A small rock is easier to slow down through friction. It discharges quickly as it enters the atmosphere. It slows down, and further equalizing of electrical potential happens without visible discharge. However, a large rock doesn't slow down nearly as fast. This means that little of its charge potential is discharged high up in the atmosphere. We have a situation where a rock is hurdling towards Earth with a charge potential similar to the ionosphere. The closer it gets to ground, the more intense the need to discharge. The sparks that cover its surface grow exponentially larger. The rock is ripped apart by intense electrical machining. Every bit of it discharges into the atmosphere, and we have an electrical explosion.

The larger the rock, and the more acute its angle of entry, the closer it will get to Earth before exploding, but it will never touch the ground directly because the potential for an explosion increases exponentially with a meteorite's closeness to ground. There will be electrical contact between the incoming rock and ground before impact, and this will cause instant obliteration of the rock. The pressure between Earth and the rock will be enormous, and there will be a round crater where the impact would have been, but the rock itself will not reach ground before it's blown to bits. Hence, the conspicuous lack of large meteorite remnants found on Earth.

Large meteorite glowing before exploding