Hey Dave, I just wanted to let you know that if the object that shattered your panel came from space, it was not a micrometeorite. Their terminal velocity is far too small to shatter your panel, as they are essentially just specs of dust. Even a 1cm diameter meteorite has a terminal velocity of less than 31 m/s, and your windshield handles even faster impacts with rocks regularly. If this was caused by a meteorite, it would have been at least 2 centimeters across to have caused this sort of damage. Check out hyperphysics' terminal velocity calculator if you want to learn more. There's still a chance, however, that you got nailed by a sizable meteorite. You should look around your gutters and lawn for any strange looking rocks.
Why not dig the bits out - I'm sure you can find someone with a good microscope to look at them. I wonder how much of the visible crater shape is due to the way toughened glass breaks from any impact, or even internal stress from a manufacturing flaw.
+mikeselectricstuff It's middle of summer down there right? With the highest day/night temperature differences causing stress to the tempered (meaning under extreme stress) glass ?
+mikeselectricstuff Tempered glass wouldn't cause the metal backing to buckle in a rippled pattern or form a crater upon shattering. My mother's dining room door shattered from thermal cycling last summer. Cracks radiated from the failure point but the whole panel remained flat, held together by an internal lamination. To have a crater, something must have pushed (or pulled) the shattered glass in, such as the inertia from the impact zone pushing the backing, pulling the shattered glass nearby in with it.
before he digs them out I would suggest he takes detailed pictures of the impact from overhead and from a 45 degree angle all the way around. the way glass breaks is that the cracks will stop at pre-existing cracks since the glass cracks spread at the speed of sound in glass the shape of the object that impacted can be accurately determined by the way the cracks have been spread. I knew a forensic tech once who showed me how they determined which bullets first penetrated a piece of glass and if they were tumbling as they did so. you don't happen to have that x ray fluorescence spectrometer anymore do you? I would love to see what the composition of those brown specs are if they are able to have their spectrum measured if your device is able to do such measurements on such a small target area. Due care should be exercised in removing such samples with the upmost care to prevent more contamination. if those specs are of nickel/iron they could be at any one of several oxidation states due to atmospheric heating they very well could appear as both brown and blue even though they are comprised of the same elements.
+yamatoneko1 Actually my uncles windshield cracked because of that, one day it was hot and the other raining a couple weeks ago in Victoria, but this looks like something sharp hit it...
+EEVblog th-cam.com/video/2uhAaspMqq4/w-d-xo.html look at the far right. lots of small brown stuff. all in all it i would say a small stone object at high enough speed to make the dent on the back side. at impact it would break up and spread in the gab between the glass and the cells. as the glass breaks it would collaps and stop the spreading of stone particles. cricket ball ruled out. stone throwed by hand would not hit hard enough to make the dent and would have end up in the gutter. ice from a plane.... nahh they dont dump toilets anymore. and i dont think they de-ice the planes either - no need to. hail.... hmm... 0,0001% chance but why then only one panel and why brown particles?
+aDynoNet Have a similar problem with squirrels. Can't leave my kitchen window open and leave the room. The damn buggers jump in from the tree next to my window and nick everything thats small and looks like eatable stuff.
+ceecrb1 That was my initial thought, or a catapult maybe? As per other comments here, it would be difficult to imagine a micro meteorite fragment that small retaining enough kinetic energy to do that much damage. If that were the case people would frequently seriously injured by the same phenomenon, and cars etc would regularly displaying damage.
+ceecrb1 I was wondering if Dave's neighbourhood kids watch his video's and were crapping themselves after they accidentally broke it. I bet they are happy now he thinks it was a meteorite.
+turboslag i doubt even that. Eg the kids with catapult theory... Kids are kids and do silly things like firing a rock high in the air to see how high it will go, without thinking of it comming back down again.
Great to see the microscope footage Dave. If it didn't penetrate see if you can cut the back bump off and check what is there. Also try throwing a cricket ball at another part of the panel and see what kind of an impact pattern you get. The dirt you are seeing may in fact be meteorite dust that deposited itself while the panel was up there and after the break. It's an experiment you can easily do by leaving a sheet of paper out and seeing the dust that accumulates on it, after a few days take a magnet and see all the meteorite dust you collect.
those particles could be simply dust, that's always in the air. even more so in dry regions. when we here in europe get blasted with sahara sand, it's totally possible for those fragments to come from 100km or more away. a bit of rain on it, and they would get burried under some glass and inside the smalles cracks. That impact looks like it's from a spherical object. the well defined center is from the very small contact point of a sphere on a plane. It must have had enough knietic energy to break the tempered glass and also push fragments to the back of the panel. Micrometeorites don't have that kinetic energy. What makes me wonder is how you immediately jumped to that conclusion while usually using scientific methods... Ockham's razor needs to be sharpened from time to time. Otherwise we'll drown in zebras.
A suitably small rock stuck in the wheel of an air plane sounds more plausible, given the circumstances. Whether or not that would carry enough energy, I do not know.
no, sorry. micrometeorids are really tiny... if they hit the atmosphere they will burn up or slow down like sand does, if you drop it from a plane. it's not possible that such a thing remains enough kinetic energie to damage that panel. but I agree, the object must have been a very small one.
+Sven Schumacher depends on size before it enters atmosphere. some do get through with right mass to do an impact like this, chances are small thou, maybe +EEVblog should consider himself lucky ?
+Bo Herrmannsen if it is big enough to crush the panel it probably is strong enough to penetrate the roof also. if it was a micrometeroid it must have been very hot at impact. there ist no sign that there was great heat.
+Sven Schumacher It could be that the supposed micrometeorite burned up to be the perfect size - and landed right there. The size is somewhat coherent.
+Sven Schumacher No it would have started out larger and reduced in size as it went through the atmosphere and when it impacted it would have been small.
Very interesting. Take it to the local university and get them to look at it under their scanning electron microscope. They will be able to look at the chemical composition of the fragments. I suspect that the atmosphere would have slowed down any micrometeorite so that it would have bounced off the glass.
+EEVblog A lot of contamination around the impact zone. www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2016/01/how-to-find-a-meteorite-thats-fallen-to-earth-(2) This could be a lead on who to talk to.
+EEVblog Oh and put a piece of brand new white crisp paper over the impact then move a neodymium magnet over it. If there's something there after that, you're 50%, meteorites are quite often magnetic.
I do not know whether the conditions apply in your area, but in many places falling ordinance is quite a bit more common than people realize. Guns of various types are fired up into the air and the bullets come down with considerable velocity. I know roofers who say they commonly encounter bullets embedded into rooftops.
+EEVblog Looking at your ruler and the damage, the cross section of the "point" was about 1mm, the object was probably bigger, in the 5mm range. let's go for 5mm cube, going subsonic, of magnetite, that's enough to shatter glass. As for sharp edges, bigger meteorites often shatter going through higher atmosphere into sharp pieces... So, for me, your analysis is ok.
While I also think that it was a very small and fast object, and the first thing that comes to my mind being it is a micrometeorite, the dirt you see I would say is mostly from the environment getting caught in the glass shards. Before you throw away this thing, maybe scrape out the glass in the middle and maybe one day there is the opportunity for someone else to look at it, e.g. with an electron microscope or do some mass spectral analysis or so.
+Dennis Lubert I doubt it's dirt, as it's only in the exact middle of the impact and small radius around it. Tons of other glass shards further out have nothing.
+Dennis Lubert I doubt it's dirt, as it's only in the exact middle of the impact and small radius around it. Tons of other glass shards further out have nothing.
+StoreBrand anything so small would hit the ground at its terminal velocity which would be so little it would even be hard to feel on your skin... You are a bit too quick to conclude it is of that size.
+StoreBrand anything so small would hit the ground at its terminal velocity which would be so little it would even be hard to feel on your skin... You are a bit too quick to conclude it is of that size.
+StoreBrand He's not wrong. It's physically impossible for a micrometeorite to carry enough energy to cause that damage. The Earth's atmosphere slows all but the very largest meteorites to terminal velocity. If/when a meteorite makes it to the ground faster than terminal velocity, the whole world will know it.
Have you contacted the company that made the panels for their opinion? I imagine they've done tons of impact tests and would have some idea on what it would take to do that specific type of damage.
+Yucannt Hahvitt Your conclusion is rash about my opinion. I only want him to sit on Daves house for a bit. If he gets hit by a space rock in the process so be it.
+John Miner You're flat out saying he should sit there so that he gets hit by a micrometeorite, don't try to play it off like a child, you're an ass. Just as bad as the extremists who wish someone would kill Obama. Americans.... sigh.
Thanks for sharing this Dave, I would be tempted to cut away that white backing plastic and see if there is anything there under that protruding point.
Have you checked your gutter and garden for glass shards? Because if they still are there, the object may also still be there. But only if its density is the same as or more then glass.
There might still be a large core nugget of the material inside that divot on the rear. If I recall correctly, meteorite craters tend to backfill, covering the actual meteorite with debris. I'd take a dremel to the divot and carefully removed a postage stamp sized piece of backing to see if it's under it.
Many years ago, our yard light, an incandescent bulb, was shattered. When I examined the fixture, I saw a small puncture-hole in the reflector, in a position that could only have come from a steep angle above. For years, I have assumed it was a stray .22 caliber bullet that someone had shot up into the air, but now I'm not so sure.
I actually have some experience in this - all though not a meteorite but a 1" stone fired 100ft across the yard by my riding mover. It hit one of my panels at a 45 degree angle and bounced off and went another 100ft. The panel shattered just like this one but left no crater at all! Tempered glass is tough stuff... i'm thinking something big 4+" diameter hit Daves panel.
+EEVblog I'm sorry man, but seriously that's probably not a micrometeorite- and i will give a few different reasons to think of: 1) micrometeorites loose all significant velocity by the time the reach ground- and they end up as atmospheric dust 2) lets suspend the fact that the meteorite would not have been moving fast at all due to atmospheric drag: if a microscopic particle did in fact hit your solar panel moving at the speed you believe it did the impact would not have caused that massive crack- it would look like a divot without those spider line moving out from it- this is partially because the impact would happen at speeds greater than the fracture speed of glass, and partially due to the fact that so much energy would be released in that impact (relative to usual impacts of that contact area) that both the entire meteorite and the impact site on the panel would vaporize, leaving a tiny divot, possibly not visible to the eyes 3) finally think of a large sphere: while the surface area of the sphere is far greater than the point of impact you describe it only touches a surface at one point- a tangent plain, if you want. a sphere will therefore make that style impact, no matter the size- as long as it is moving at a sufficient speed to crack the glass, without penetrating. finally i have a suggestion for you: there is a circle where the impact area of the glass is depressed below the main surface- do some quick measurements that circle- that circle will show you both the size of ball that impacted your solar panel, and if you want to do some math, the force applied. the circle is not the diameter of the ball, but the secant line across the sphere at the point it stopped. the depth of the impact and the secant can be used to give a rough sphere size (expect some rebound from the impact point) and then use the quoted breaking pressures of your panel- you can assume that the circle I've been talking about is where the sphere came to rest- working back from there you can deduce the weight and speed of the ball, and using the volume, found with the math i gave you, create some ranges of density/ velocity of the ball. I assume somewhere in that range you will find some kind of hard sports ball which matches the approximate size calculated from the secant and depth of impact
Cool! It does seem to be a micrometeorite! When glass is impacted it behaves like a high-viscosity liquid. The cool thing (to me, anyway) is that tempered and safety glass preserves the shock wave distortion of the glass. VERY rough calculations would indicate a speed between 500 and 1.5k km/s for a mass of around 1.0gm (based in the total distortion of around 1.0 square meter) - With a margin of error of +/- 300% in either speed or mass. :) It would have to be fairly "slow" (for a meteorite) to survive transiting the atmosphere, and would have been further slowed by air resistance during the transit. Two basic types of meteorites: stony and ferrous. Seems to be more likely a stony type, judging from the particulates that seem to be left over. It may have been a piece of a larger meteor that broke up in the atmosphere. Anyway - Thanks! It's totally cool!
Could you pass a bar magnet over the impact site and see if anything sticks? Meteorites tend to fall into two groups and the chance of finding nickel or iron is pretty high. A magnet is a useful tool in meteorite hunting. It could have been a carbonaceous chondrite which vary significantly in metal content. Some of those grains look greenish and could be olivine which would support a metorite impact. It could have been wind deposited but you said it's inside the glass and the other areas don't seem to have any sand or dirt that's settled.
i've shot a sheet of glass similar to shape and form of this solar panel with an air rifle and it left an identical crater to the one you see here. hope that helps.
On thing for sure is that the panel was hit by a fast-moving, small, dense object as that dent on the back of the panel was very small but well-defined.
Take to the Synchrotron and you can see what is there using Xray diffraction, and then you can tell from isotopic analysis whether it is nickel iron from space or steel from a foundry.
Since it is already broken why not shoot a bb gun or pellet rifle at a portion and see if copper or lead residue is left. Metal detecting may find a suspect object. Great vid.
One for the meteorite/meteoroid theory - A man in Vellore, India was just killed by a falling meteorite.The size of meteorites actually hitting the earth follow a distribution curve, some are too small to do anything, some take out a solar panel, and some kill a guy in India.
It is incredible that the object that struck your panel has probably been around for millions of years, moving from celestial body to celestial body only to end up smashing your panel
If it had been any metallic object - bolt, bullet and so on - there wouldn't be so many and so tiny different coloured particles, clearly propagating from the impact center. Good thing your panel caught it, instead of any living thing. :)
Nice video Dave. I think you should take a picture of the panel and possibly get rid of the horizontal and vertical lines and put it up on the wall.... It would make a great conversation piece of art. On another point and after a lot of tooing and frowing. I bought an Oscilloscope. It is a Siglent SDS1102CML. I didn't go for the CNL version as the CML had a lot more deep memory. It cost £275 and is a 100MHz. I wondered if you had an opinion on it.
After your earlier comments about how your crazy neighbours spend so much on electricity in your area - I'm sure its just one of them throwing a rock over the fence.
One thing you might want to do is to send it to a local university, tell them your theory and have them do some analysis and tell you what the brown stuff is.
There was a concentration of orange and black particles in the impact centre, which to me suggests metal oxides. Could the orange be rust? I don't know but pretty interesting. Could you use the rest of that panel to try to recreate another impact? I know the glass is gone but the impact print on the back as well as the circle bit on the front may give a clue to actual size and weight and speed of whatever hit it?
I don't know if meteorites typically shape as jagged or smooth after passing through the atmosphere but if they are jagged after passing the sharp points would allow the meteorite to place more force onto a smaller area without as much mass. Ceramics are like this and small broken pieces with little mass moving fast are well known to break tempered glass very easily. Since tempered glass is like a Ruperts drop as soon as you break the tension on the glass the break moves through the glass at the speed of sound.
Should cut out and frame that section of glass.. or possibly see if anyone's got a spectrometer to spare. One good look at some of those fragments would tell you whether it's some tiny shard of metal or space rock. Also, can you fix the panel? If it's just the glass and maybe just one tiny area of silicon damaged, it seems like it may be easily repaired.
Justin case is a youtuber in Australia who has a TH-cam channel on his solar setup and he bought a bag of damaged solar panels that he prepared with a particular solution so if you check out his channel it might be worth looking up his repaired series on solar panels
Have you considered a small caliber round, like a .22, or an air rifle pelet being the culprit? someone might have done some pest control in the area and took a unsafe shot . The .22 or a air rifle pellet can go a bit of a distance, and still retain enough velocity to cause the damage .
it was most likely made from a stronger material than most meteorites thus allowing it to reach a higher velocity without being totally destroyed by the atmosphere.
That really is awesome. And it's not often I use that word. It's probably worth real money to you if you want to flog it, there are collectors out there. Personally - if it were me - if I got it replaced as part of the insurance cover I'd give it to the local university to confirm and then to the local museum.
Would be cool to use the rest of the shattered panel to good use test out a dummy impact :) . I'm interested if a 2mm iron or steel pellet would produce the same result.
6:30 That debris is consistent with dyed leather, the diameter of the hole in the top layer is about that of a baseball, and I'd expect something as firm as a baseball to cause that kind of damage in multi-laminated glass over a fairly rigid substrate as the ball flattens on impact. I doubt it was anything smaller than a cricket ball, and if people play cricket in your neighborhood, I'd have to invoke Occam's Razor here.
Its not from a kids slingshot,stray bullet or something like that (it would not produce a hole like that,and notice the build up in the middle,the same thing can be seen from craters on the moon for example) This is maybe a 1-2 mm object,and by that its almost certain a micro meteorite because it takes alot of energy to make such an impact from something that small. Someone said it would all burn up,not always,sometimes there are "leftovers" of a bigger object that still make it to the ground.
I would have thought anything the size of a micrometeorite falling from space would be slowed so much by the atmosphere it wouldn't harm the panel. I think more likely is some little trouble maker throwing stones. If the point of a stone hit the panel it would make the same sort of mark and leave the same sort of residue.
Kinetic energy, you just got to love it! Think of the astronauts next time they do one of their spacewalks... If it goes through your solar panel after it gone through the atmosphere.
Considering that you said that panel has been damaged & exposed to the elements for quite some time, it is possible that those tiny particles could have been dust blown in there by wind. Shame you could not get to it early. Also, maybe you should cover your panels in thick clear plastic. Since a thick plastic sheet would be cheaper to replace than a solar panel.
Occam's Razor suggests a rock of terrestrial origin. Others have pointed out the terminal velocity problem with the micrometeorite scenario. (Otherwise people would be maimed or killed by micrometeorites on a daily basis.)
As someone already pointed out, a meteoroid would reach its terminal velocity prior to impact. Although the relative velocity (relative to earth) is in the range you suggested (10 - 20 km/s), the speed drops significantly due to atmospheric drag and could be no more than 100 - 200 km/h (depends on the size and shape of the object) at impact. I would expect that also this "low" velocity is enough to shatter the panel, imagine a stone of a few cm diameter at this speed hitting your cars windscreen - it could (would?) shatter it as well.
In a previous video you showed the back of the panel and it had a deformation showing that the energy had continued well into the lower layers of the panel. Could it be that if you go much deeper into the panel you may well find more of the object that caused it?
Thought I spotted something in the glass but it was just a spot on my screen! Have you searched around for something on the roof, in the gutter or on the ground somewhere.
Did you check the gutters, and the storm water trap out in the street? If it was a meteorite its very likely to still be in the gutter or on the ground near the house. You could use a magnet on a stick to check the storm water trap.
Now if you could only get some micro tweezers to grab one of those tiny bits of 'rock' and maybe someone from a local lab could analyze it. Meteors have unique chemistry that will give them away!
The problem with micrometeorite theory is that terminal velocity for tiny objects is quite low, 100 mph or so. That tiny an object wouldn't crack anything at that speed. It would have had to accompany a much larger meteorite until virtually the last moment to conserve that much velocity, then you'd have had a nearby larger impact. The same is true for bullets fired straight up or nearly so, they only make it to about 150mph when they come down. A larger meteorite may have ablated down to a very tiny size, but the chance of it hitting something at any significant speed is tiny. I'd guess some child with an arrow or spear that they then retrieved and fled the scene.
I am no expert in meteorites, but I do work in the astronomy field. The ipact sure seems to point towards an object of around 0.5-1cm. The energy transfered to your panel does actually match the meteorite impact, but also a falling bullet. Is it the hunting season? I think most meteorites contain a fair amount of iron in them. Have you tried to approach a neodymium magnet to see if it pulls out some residue? A bullet would leave lead which is amagnetic.
Some ceramic or carbide fragment is my guess. Those particles seen there could be airborne sand or even micrometeorite dust from the constant strikes non damaging strikes.
The high velocity of the object created a physical ripple in the solar panel, which explains the mushroom effect on both sides. Never seen it done on a hard material though, interesting.
Airport traffic usually follows the same takeoff/landing pattern so chances are those overhead planes are either taking off or landing but not a mix of both, yes? And ice should just be from planes coming in from on high? Are the planes over your house approaching or departing the airport? I wouldn't put much meaning in those particles. That panel has been sitting on your roof for weeks and many rainfalls since the impact, right? I imagine those bits are just dust and grit that found its way to your panel by wind and whatnot, sat around and eventually washed into the cracks and crevices by rain. It's pretty unlikely that something left outside for weeks would be uncontaminated.
Maybe the producer of the panels or the glass made some simulations of how the glass covering is behaving under different impact situation (That would be to convenient). You mentioned you got the new panel for free from the producer, maybe they cooperate ones more. Call them up ...
Hey Dave, I just wanted to let you know that if the object that shattered your panel came from space, it was not a micrometeorite. Their terminal velocity is far too small to shatter your panel, as they are essentially just specs of dust. Even a 1cm diameter meteorite has a terminal velocity of less than 31 m/s, and your windshield handles even faster impacts with rocks regularly.
If this was caused by a meteorite, it would have been at least 2 centimeters across to have caused this sort of damage.
Check out hyperphysics' terminal velocity calculator if you want to learn more. There's still a chance, however, that you got nailed by a sizable meteorite. You should look around your gutters and lawn for any strange looking rocks.
I'm not saying it was ayy lmaos, but it was ayy lmaos.
हॉ ये थोडा टेक्निकल है।
It obviously was a kangaroo because you are in Australia. If you where in the USA it would have been a .223 round.
Why not dig the bits out - I'm sure you can find someone with a good microscope to look at them. I wonder how much of the visible crater shape is due to the way toughened glass breaks from any impact, or even internal stress from a manufacturing flaw.
+mikeselectricstuff It's middle of summer down there right? With the highest day/night temperature differences causing stress to the tempered (meaning under extreme stress) glass ?
+mikeselectricstuff Tempered glass wouldn't cause the metal backing to buckle in a rippled pattern or form a crater upon shattering. My mother's dining room door shattered from thermal cycling last summer. Cracks radiated from the failure point but the whole panel remained flat, held together by an internal lamination. To have a crater, something must have pushed (or pulled) the shattered glass in, such as the inertia from the impact zone pushing the backing, pulling the shattered glass nearby in with it.
before he digs them out I would suggest he takes detailed pictures of the impact from overhead and from a 45 degree angle all the way around. the way glass breaks is that the cracks will stop at pre-existing cracks since the glass cracks spread at the speed of sound in glass the shape of the object that impacted can be accurately determined by the way the cracks have been spread. I knew a forensic tech once who showed me how they determined which bullets first penetrated a piece of glass and if they were tumbling as they did so.
you don't happen to have that x ray fluorescence spectrometer anymore do you? I would love to see what the composition of those brown specs are if they are able to have their spectrum measured if your device is able to do such measurements on such a small target area. Due care should be exercised in removing such samples with the upmost care to prevent more contamination. if those specs are of nickel/iron they could be at any one of several oxidation states due to atmospheric heating they very well could appear as both brown and blue even though they are comprised of the same elements.
+yamatoneko1 Actually my uncles windshield cracked because of that, one day it was hot and the other raining a couple weeks ago in Victoria, but this looks like something sharp hit it...
Tyler Taupe I think a local university would love the chance to have some grad students evaluate that panel.
Someone in the planes above pissed out a kidney stone.
Lol
+Stowe1664 paneful*
+greentg10 no, it's painful. I don't know if you are trolling or not, but learn your grammar.
+Elliot Lockett I'm sure he meant 'planeful'. which is the correct spelling by the way.
*DragonFruitBoss* it isn't grammar, dummy. It's conventions. Spelling is in conventions.
I'm never going outside again..
+1
Read more about "sudden adult death syndrome" or "sudden unexpected death syndrome". LoL )
+cLick1338 news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130220-russia-meteorite-ann-hodges-science-space-hit/
+Leon Kernan no change there
I just wielded the internet comment power of god to crush the FIRST comment
+EEVblog And this is the first comment on the first comment!!
It's still there :3
Greetings Dave, hail Satan!!
first
+EEVblog th-cam.com/video/2uhAaspMqq4/w-d-xo.html look at the far right. lots of small brown stuff. all in all it i would say a small stone object at high enough speed to make the dent on the back side. at impact it would break up and spread in the gab between the glass and the cells. as the glass breaks it would collaps and stop the spreading of stone particles. cricket ball ruled out. stone throwed by hand would not hit hard enough to make the dent and would have end up in the gutter. ice from a plane.... nahh they dont dump toilets anymore. and i dont think they de-ice the planes either - no need to. hail.... hmm... 0,0001% chance but why then only one panel and why brown particles?
A crow nicked a pork chop off my BBQ, took off with it and dropped it on my car, smashing the rear windscreen.
best comment, IMO
+simontay1984 Hahahahaha!
+aDynoNet Have a similar problem with squirrels. Can't leave my kitchen window open and leave the room. The damn buggers jump in from the tree next to my window and nick everything thats small and looks like eatable stuff.
+aDynoNet A crow dropped a nut on my head once. Little buggers.
Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian. He was reportedly killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle.
Seems red coloured like native ausie rock. Is it not more likely that a local scoundrel just threw a rock at the solar panels?
+ceecrb1
That was my initial thought, or a catapult maybe? As per other comments here, it would be difficult to imagine a micro meteorite fragment that small retaining enough kinetic energy to do that much damage.
If that were the case people would frequently seriously injured by the same phenomenon, and cars etc would regularly displaying damage.
With the angle of the panels on roof would a catapult shot be deflected? Impact looks like a direct hit.
google Account
Not if the perpetrator climbed on a nearby roof to take the shot.
+ceecrb1 I was wondering if Dave's neighbourhood kids watch his video's and were crapping themselves after they accidentally broke it. I bet they are happy now he thinks it was a meteorite.
+turboslag i doubt even that. Eg the kids with catapult theory... Kids are kids and do silly things like firing a rock high in the air to see how high it will go, without thinking of it comming back down again.
I so want to ask....
"How can a meteorite hit Dave's house since Australia is down-under?"
:)
Those bits could be as old as the solar system, older than any rock on earth. Could even be Moon rock ejectorate.
Double entendre:. That solar system can't be more than ~20 years old... 🤣
Great to see the microscope footage Dave. If it didn't penetrate see if you can cut the back bump off and check what is there. Also try throwing a cricket ball at another part of the panel and see what kind of an impact pattern you get. The dirt you are seeing may in fact be meteorite dust that deposited itself while the panel was up there and after the break. It's an experiment you can easily do by leaving a sheet of paper out and seeing the dust that accumulates on it, after a few days take a magnet and see all the meteorite dust you collect.
Hey Dave,
Why don't you dig it out of the back panel so that we can see the little bugger?
Yes, cut in through the rear deformed plastic sheet. The object might be sitting right there!
I support this!
+Energy Fabricator There is not much evidence that it survived the impact. Unless glass melted over the meteorite.
those particles could be simply dust, that's always in the air. even more so in dry regions. when we here in europe get blasted with sahara sand, it's totally possible for those fragments to come from 100km or more away. a bit of rain on it, and they would get burried under some glass and inside the smalles cracks. That impact looks like it's from a spherical object. the well defined center is from the very small contact point of a sphere on a plane. It must have had enough knietic energy to break the tempered glass and also push fragments to the back of the panel. Micrometeorites don't have that kinetic energy.
What makes me wonder is how you immediately jumped to that conclusion while usually using scientific methods... Ockham's razor needs to be sharpened from time to time. Otherwise we'll drown in zebras.
A suitably small rock stuck in the wheel of an air plane sounds more plausible, given the circumstances. Whether or not that would carry enough energy, I do not know.
The neighbors kids were throwing rocks again..
are those particles magnetic? that is common thing to check if you found meteorite.
Good idea
Absolutely!! Cody's lab style!!
test it with a magnetic probe on the multimeter
+morpheus ꀊ The only problem is the vast majority of them do not contain ferrous metals. They're stony in composition.
Could a rock fired from a lawn mower make it up there at the right speed and angle?
Throw a cricket ball or other object at undamaged area to compare impact patterns?
it was tempered glass. whole panel glass is cracked.
+Walt S In Australia they throw the panel at the cricket ball.
+google Account *Russia
+Walt S I'm going with:"Don't throw anything at Daves remaining undamaged panels". As the others say, there is no undamaged part of the first panel.
no, sorry. micrometeorids are really tiny... if they hit the atmosphere they will burn up or slow down like sand does, if you drop it from a plane. it's not possible that such a thing remains enough kinetic energie to damage that panel.
but I agree, the object must have been a very small one.
True. Air resistance would slow it too much.
+Sven Schumacher depends on size before it enters atmosphere. some do get through with right mass to do an impact like this, chances are small thou, maybe +EEVblog should consider himself lucky ?
+Bo Herrmannsen if it is big enough to crush the panel it probably is strong enough to penetrate the roof also. if it was a micrometeroid it must have been very hot at impact. there ist no sign that there was great heat.
+Sven Schumacher It could be that the supposed micrometeorite burned up to be the perfect size - and landed right there. The size is somewhat coherent.
+Sven Schumacher No it would have started out larger and reduced in size as it went through the atmosphere and when it impacted it would have been small.
Very interesting. Take it to the local university and get them to look at it under their scanning electron microscope. They will be able to look at the chemical composition of the fragments. I suspect that the atmosphere would have slowed down any micrometeorite so that it would have bounced off the glass.
+Peter Kwan Hey man, this is not the place your funny comments. Get outta here!
+Peter Kwan I need to find a uni or other place who can anaylse something else actually, still struggling to find one.
+Jan F what ?
+EEVblog A lot of contamination around the impact zone.
www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2016/01/how-to-find-a-meteorite-thats-fallen-to-earth-(2)
This could be a lead on who to talk to.
+EEVblog Oh and put a piece of brand new white crisp paper over the impact then move a neodymium magnet over it. If there's something there after that, you're 50%, meteorites are quite often magnetic.
Well, i think it's time to call Agent Mulder & Scully
Good thing they are just recently back on the unexplained files.
Agreed! 😁
+Osmosis
acording to aging Mulder it's an executive corporate leader or a high comanding officer.
*spoilers*
humans are the dicks in the new X-files
+svampebob007 hows that a spoiler? a very active tendency these days. a bunchs of dicks in suits
I do not know whether the conditions apply in your area, but in many places falling ordinance is quite a bit more common than people realize. Guns of various types are fired up into the air and the bullets come down with considerable velocity. I know roofers who say they commonly encounter bullets embedded into rooftops.
Would a micrometeorite have the force necessary to cause that damage?
+Xtant Audio Normally, no. otherwise every panel in the country would eventually get shattered. Obviously a rare event large one.
+EEVblog It means the meteorite lies somewhere nearby!
+EEVblog Looking at your ruler and the damage, the cross section of the "point" was about 1mm, the object was probably bigger, in the 5mm range. let's go for 5mm cube, going subsonic, of magnetite, that's enough to shatter glass.
As for sharp edges, bigger meteorites often shatter going through higher atmosphere into sharp pieces...
So, for me, your analysis is ok.
+Imyach Fomilev nope, probably shattered on inpact, and is still inside the panel, the raised bump on the back of the panel could be where it hit it.
You mean yes then, no?
I can always count on you to have some of the most interesting videos here on YT. Thanks again - keep it up!
put the residue of the impact in the centre into a spectrum analyser! would be interesting.
+antigen4 ugh - i meant mass spectrometer
Could you get some of the residue in a mass spectrometer? I'm sure you must have one in the lab somewhere!
I blame the Flying spaghetti monster, it was touched by his noddley appendage,
+Heads Tails Ramen.
+Heads Tails Ramen.
Now, I'm not an expert, but Australia is next to New Zeeland. And Kiwi birds have been known to attempt flight via rocket powered jetpack.
While I also think that it was a very small and fast object, and the first thing that comes to my mind being it is a micrometeorite, the dirt you see I would say is mostly from the environment getting caught in the glass shards. Before you throw away this thing, maybe scrape out the glass in the middle and maybe one day there is the opportunity for someone else to look at it, e.g. with an electron microscope or do some mass spectral analysis or so.
+Dennis Lubert I doubt it's dirt, as it's only in the exact middle of the impact and small radius around it. Tons of other glass shards further out have nothing.
+Dennis Lubert I doubt it's dirt, as it's only in the exact middle of the impact and small radius around it. Tons of other glass shards further out have nothing.
Send that fragments to specrum analysis.
I'm betting on meteorite, not micrometeorite.
Well you're instantly wrong because it's sub 1mm.
+StoreBrand anything so small would hit the ground at its terminal velocity which would be so little it would even be hard to feel on your skin... You are a bit too quick to conclude it is of that size.
+StoreBrand anything so small would hit the ground at its terminal velocity which would be so little it would even be hard to feel on your skin... You are a bit too quick to conclude it is of that size.
+StoreBrand He's not wrong. It's physically impossible for a micrometeorite to carry enough energy to cause that damage. The Earth's atmosphere slows all but the very largest meteorites to terminal velocity. If/when a meteorite makes it to the ground faster than terminal velocity, the whole world will know it.
Have you contacted the company that made the panels for their opinion? I imagine they've done tons of impact tests and would have some idea on what it would take to do that specific type of damage.
Would hate to get hit in the head with that same microm. dam!
JFK? Tupac? It all makes sense?
+Cy Early If only we could get Donald Trump to sit on Daves house For a couple hours maybee…
+John Miner That's a fairly rash statement. "He doesn't hold the same opinions as me so I wish he would die" very American of you.
+Yucannt Hahvitt Your conclusion is rash about my opinion. I only want him to sit on Daves house for a bit. If he gets hit by a space rock in the process so be it.
+John Miner You're flat out saying he should sit there so that he gets hit by a micrometeorite, don't try to play it off like a child, you're an ass. Just as bad as the extremists who wish someone would kill Obama. Americans.... sigh.
its time to setup a 24/7 daves solar roof cam. The eevblog army can monitor it for the next impact.
Confirmation bias at its best :D
Thanks for sharing this Dave, I would be tempted to cut away that white backing plastic and see if there is anything there under that protruding point.
Dave, for the love of kangaroos!
What is the watch you wear in your videos?
I would really like to know.
Thanks
+Moe Chan It's an Apple Watch, of course!
Sergey Zakatov I can't really tell if you're serious or not.
+Moe Chan Not serious, Dave is too cool for an Apple Watch
Sergey Zakatov Ofcourse he is.
But it makes you wonder what is cool enough for his wrist.
+Moe Chan Timex 1440 sports
As Thomas Taylor said, try picking the particles with a magnet
Awesome microscope investigation. Definitely red space rock.
it looks like a ball with the dent on the back. the glass just compacted when it shattered to make the point.
On the undamaged parts of the glass, you could perform drop tests with whatever point size and ke you think the impactor had.
Have you checked your gutter and garden for glass shards?
Because if they still are there, the object may also still be there.
But only if its density is the same as or more then glass.
I think the probability is many times higher that it was just a rock from kids playing with their slingshot...
Baseball. Australian type. If you don't have baseballs, you should get some.
This reminds me of The Andromeda Strain, watch out for the green wobbly bits.
Can you cut the encapsulation on the back to get the bump/remaining bit of it out? Would be cool to see that under the microscope.
Dave that is cool. I agree, small fast impactor.
I know that was catastrophic damage and all, but that impact damage looks pretty cool.
There might still be a large core nugget of the material inside that divot on the rear. If I recall correctly, meteorite craters tend to backfill, covering the actual meteorite with debris. I'd take a dremel to the divot and carefully removed a postage stamp sized piece of backing to see if it's under it.
Many years ago, our yard light, an incandescent bulb, was shattered. When I examined the fixture, I saw a small puncture-hole in the reflector, in a position that could only have come from a steep angle above. For years, I have assumed it was a stray .22 caliber bullet that someone had shot up into the air, but now I'm not so sure.
use EDS(Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy on a SEM) to analyze the tiny pieces embeded on the glass
Poor updating is fine for a static object, love the detail.
I actually have some experience in this - all though not a meteorite but a 1" stone fired 100ft across the yard by my riding mover. It hit one of my panels at a 45 degree angle and bounced off and went another 100ft. The panel shattered just like this one but left no crater at all! Tempered glass is tough stuff...
i'm thinking something big 4+" diameter hit Daves panel.
Sagan sighs in relief. Daddy will never know.
+EEVblog I'm sorry man, but seriously that's probably not a micrometeorite- and i will give a few different reasons to think of:
1) micrometeorites loose all significant velocity by the time the reach ground- and they end up as atmospheric dust
2) lets suspend the fact that the meteorite would not have been moving fast at all due to atmospheric drag: if a microscopic particle did in fact hit your solar panel moving at the speed you believe it did the impact would not have caused that massive crack- it would look like a divot without those spider line moving out from it- this is partially because the impact would happen at speeds greater than the fracture speed of glass, and partially due to the fact that so much energy would be released in that impact (relative to usual impacts of that contact area) that both the entire meteorite and the impact site on the panel would vaporize, leaving a tiny divot, possibly not visible to the eyes
3) finally think of a large sphere: while the surface area of the sphere is far greater than the point of impact you describe it only touches a surface at one point- a tangent plain, if you want. a sphere will therefore make that style impact, no matter the size- as long as it is moving at a sufficient speed to crack the glass, without penetrating.
finally i have a suggestion for you: there is a circle where the impact area of the glass is depressed below the main surface- do some quick measurements that circle- that circle will show you both the size of ball that impacted your solar panel, and if you want to do some math, the force applied.
the circle is not the diameter of the ball, but the secant line across the sphere at the point it stopped.
the depth of the impact and the secant can be used to give a rough sphere size (expect some rebound from the impact point)
and then use the quoted breaking pressures of your panel- you can assume that the circle I've been talking about is where the sphere came to rest- working back from there you can deduce the weight and speed of the ball, and using the volume, found with the math i gave you, create some ranges of density/ velocity of the ball.
I assume somewhere in that range you will find some kind of hard sports ball which matches the approximate size calculated from the secant and depth of impact
Cool! It does seem to be a micrometeorite! When glass is impacted it behaves like a high-viscosity liquid. The cool thing (to me, anyway) is that tempered and safety glass preserves the shock wave distortion of the glass.
VERY rough calculations would indicate a speed between 500 and 1.5k km/s for a mass of around 1.0gm (based in the total distortion of around 1.0 square meter) - With a margin of error of +/- 300% in either speed or mass. :)
It would have to be fairly "slow" (for a meteorite) to survive transiting the atmosphere, and would have been further slowed by air resistance during the transit. Two basic types of meteorites: stony and ferrous. Seems to be more likely a stony type, judging from the particulates that seem to be left over. It may have been a piece of a larger meteor that broke up in the atmosphere.
Anyway - Thanks! It's totally cool!
Could you pass a bar magnet over the impact site and see if anything sticks? Meteorites tend to fall into two groups and the chance of finding nickel or iron is pretty high. A magnet is a useful tool in meteorite hunting. It could have been a carbonaceous chondrite which vary significantly in metal content.
Some of those grains look greenish and could be olivine which would support a metorite impact. It could have been wind deposited but you said it's inside the glass and the other areas don't seem to have any sand or dirt that's settled.
i've shot a sheet of glass similar to shape and form of this solar panel with an air rifle and it left an identical crater to the one you see here. hope that helps.
On thing for sure is that the panel was hit by a fast-moving, small, dense object as that dent on the back of the panel was very small but well-defined.
Hello Dave, how old is that laptop? just wondering.
Look at the WP article you use and you'll see that a micrometeorite is
Teardown the panel, see if the micrometeorite is trapped in the layers!
Take to the Synchrotron and you can see what is there using Xray diffraction, and then you can tell from isotopic analysis whether it is nickel iron from space or steel from a foundry.
at the 1oclock position in the 2nd main ring there seems to be a foreign metal particulate lodged under the glass
Since it is already broken why not shoot a bb gun or pellet rifle at a portion and see if copper or lead residue is left. Metal detecting may find a suspect object. Great vid.
One for the meteorite/meteoroid theory - A man in Vellore, India was just killed by a falling meteorite.The size of meteorites actually hitting the earth follow a distribution curve, some are too small to do anything, some take out a solar panel, and some kill a guy in India.
www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/02/08/Indian-official-Man-dies-after-being-struck-by-meteorite-at-school/3451454936535/
It is incredible that the object that struck your panel has probably been around for millions of years, moving from celestial body to celestial body only to end up smashing your panel
If it had been any metallic object - bolt, bullet and so on - there wouldn't be so many and so tiny different coloured particles, clearly propagating from the impact center. Good thing your panel caught it, instead of any living thing. :)
Nice video Dave. I think you should take a picture of the panel and possibly get rid of the horizontal and vertical lines and put it up on the wall.... It would make a great conversation piece of art.
On another point and after a lot of tooing and frowing. I bought an Oscilloscope. It is a Siglent SDS1102CML. I didn't go for the CNL version as the CML had a lot more deep memory. It cost £275 and is a 100MHz.
I wondered if you had an opinion on it.
After your earlier comments about how your crazy neighbours spend so much on electricity in your area - I'm sure its just one of them throwing a rock over the fence.
One thing you might want to do is to send it to a local university, tell them your theory and have them do some analysis and tell you what the brown stuff is.
There was a concentration of orange and black particles in the impact centre, which to me suggests metal oxides. Could the orange be rust? I don't know but pretty interesting. Could you use the rest of that panel to try to recreate another impact? I know the glass is gone but the impact print on the back as well as the circle bit on the front may give a clue to actual size and weight and speed of whatever hit it?
I don't know if meteorites typically shape as jagged or smooth after passing through the atmosphere but if they are jagged after passing the sharp points would allow the meteorite to place more force onto a smaller area without as much mass. Ceramics are like this and small broken pieces with little mass moving fast are well known to break tempered glass very easily. Since tempered glass is like a Ruperts drop as soon as you break the tension on the glass the break moves through the glass at the speed of sound.
Should cut out and frame that section of glass.. or possibly see if anyone's got a spectrometer to spare. One good look at some of those fragments would tell you whether it's some tiny shard of metal or space rock.
Also, can you fix the panel? If it's just the glass and maybe just one tiny area of silicon damaged, it seems like it may be easily repaired.
Justin case is a youtuber in Australia who has a TH-cam channel on his solar setup and he bought a bag of damaged solar panels that he prepared with a particular solution so if you check out his channel it might be worth looking up his repaired series on solar panels
try running a strong magnet in a zip lock bag over the impact. any micro meteorite particles will likely stick to it
Have you considered a small caliber round, like a .22, or an air rifle pelet being the culprit? someone might have done some pest control in the area and took a unsafe shot . The .22 or a air rifle pellet can go a bit of a distance, and still retain enough velocity to cause the damage .
it was most likely made from a stronger material than most meteorites thus allowing it to reach a higher velocity without being totally destroyed by the atmosphere.
Might there be a wire or part of the internal circuitry that failed/arced causing the damage from the inside-out?
That really is awesome. And it's not often I use that word. It's probably worth real money to you if you want to flog it, there are collectors out there. Personally - if it were me - if I got it replaced as part of the insurance cover I'd give it to the local university to confirm and then to the local museum.
Would be cool to use the rest of the shattered panel to good use test out a dummy impact :) . I'm interested if a 2mm iron or steel pellet would produce the same result.
6:30 That debris is consistent with dyed leather, the diameter of the hole in the top layer is about that of a baseball, and I'd expect something as firm as a baseball to cause that kind of damage in multi-laminated glass over a fairly rigid substrate as the ball flattens on impact. I doubt it was anything smaller than a cricket ball, and if people play cricket in your neighborhood, I'd have to invoke Occam's Razor here.
Its not from a kids slingshot,stray bullet or something like that (it would not produce a hole like that,and notice the build up in the middle,the same thing can be seen from craters on the moon for example)
This is maybe a 1-2 mm object,and by that its almost certain a micro meteorite because it takes alot of energy to make such an impact from something that small.
Someone said it would all burn up,not always,sometimes there are "leftovers" of a bigger object that still make it to the ground.
I would have thought anything the size of a micrometeorite falling from space would be slowed so much by the atmosphere it wouldn't harm the panel. I think more likely is some little trouble maker throwing stones. If the point of a stone hit the panel it would make the same sort of mark and leave the same sort of residue.
Kinetic energy, you just got to love it!
Think of the astronauts next time they do one of their spacewalks... If it goes through your solar panel after it gone through the atmosphere.
Considering that you said that panel has been damaged & exposed to the elements for quite some time, it is possible that those tiny particles could have been dust blown in there by wind. Shame you could not get to it early. Also, maybe you should cover your panels in thick clear plastic. Since a thick plastic sheet would be cheaper to replace than a solar panel.
+Kabuki Jo Does not explain why they are only in the centre around the point impact zone.
EEVblog
That is a good point
Occam's Razor suggests a rock of terrestrial origin. Others have pointed out the terminal velocity problem with the micrometeorite scenario. (Otherwise people would be maimed or killed by micrometeorites on a daily basis.)
As someone already pointed out, a meteoroid would reach its terminal velocity prior to impact. Although the relative velocity (relative to earth) is in the range you suggested (10 - 20 km/s), the speed drops significantly due to atmospheric drag and could be no more than 100 - 200 km/h (depends on the size and shape of the object) at impact. I would expect that also this "low" velocity is enough to shatter the panel, imagine a stone of a few cm diameter at this speed hitting your cars windscreen - it could (would?) shatter it as well.
In a previous video you showed the back of the panel and it had a deformation showing that the energy had continued well into the lower layers of the panel. Could it be that if you go much deeper into the panel you may well find more of the object that caused it?
Thought I spotted something in the glass but it was just a spot on my screen!
Have you searched around for something on the roof, in the gutter or on the ground somewhere.
Did you check the gutters, and the storm water trap out in the street? If it was a meteorite its very likely to still be in the gutter or on the ground near the house. You could use a magnet on a stick to check the storm water trap.
Now if you could only get some micro tweezers to grab one of those tiny bits of 'rock' and maybe someone from a local lab could analyze it. Meteors have unique chemistry that will give them away!
The problem with micrometeorite theory is that terminal velocity for tiny objects is quite low, 100 mph or so. That tiny an object wouldn't crack anything at that speed. It would have had to accompany a much larger meteorite until virtually the last moment to conserve that much velocity, then you'd have had a nearby larger impact. The same is true for bullets fired straight up or nearly so, they only make it to about 150mph when they come down. A larger meteorite may have ablated down to a very tiny size, but the chance of it hitting something at any significant speed is tiny. I'd guess some child with an arrow or spear that they then retrieved and fled the scene.
I am no expert in meteorites, but I do work in the astronomy field. The ipact sure seems to point towards an object of around 0.5-1cm. The energy transfered to your panel does actually match the meteorite impact, but also a falling bullet. Is it the hunting season?
I think most meteorites contain a fair amount of iron in them. Have you tried to approach a neodymium magnet to see if it pulls out some residue? A bullet would leave lead which is amagnetic.
From a fan of the Andromeda Strain: you better check any nearby rubber seals and stock up on sterno and asperin :-)
Some ceramic or carbide fragment is my guess. Those particles seen there could be airborne sand or even micrometeorite dust from the constant strikes non damaging strikes.
The high velocity of the object created a physical ripple in the solar panel, which explains the mushroom effect on both sides. Never seen it done on a hard material though, interesting.
Airport traffic usually follows the same takeoff/landing pattern so chances are those overhead planes are either taking off or landing but not a mix of both, yes? And ice should just be from planes coming in from on high? Are the planes over your house approaching or departing the airport?
I wouldn't put much meaning in those particles. That panel has been sitting on your roof for weeks and many rainfalls since the impact, right? I imagine those bits are just dust and grit that found its way to your panel by wind and whatnot, sat around and eventually washed into the cracks and crevices by rain. It's pretty unlikely that something left outside for weeks would be uncontaminated.
Gonna be a party pooper and suggest it's more likely a rock kicked up high by a nearby lawnmower that arced across.
Maybe the producer of the panels or the glass made some simulations of how the glass covering is behaving under different impact situation (That would be to convenient). You mentioned you got the new panel for free from the producer, maybe they cooperate ones more. Call them up ...