Tag: fireball

Whisky recalled in Europe for antifreeze ingredient – Feds say OK for us!

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One of the fastest-growing liquor brands in America is being recalled in Europe over an ingredient found in some types of antifreeze.

But here in America, it’s still on store shelves…

“Whiskey is hot, but flavored whiskey is even hotter, and out of all the flavored whiskey, Fireball is by far the hottest,” New York Times editor Clay Risen said.

But some European countries have given the cinnamon-flavored drink an icy reception.

Finland, Sweden and Norway pulled it off store shelves after finding it contained too much propylene glycol…

While strictly monitored in Europe, both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have approved the use of propylene glycol in the U.S. in limited quantities.

It can be found in scores of everyday products from food to certain toothpastes.

“Mostly products that are heavily processed, so a lot of sodas, a lot of store-bought cake mixes, a lot of icing, a lot of ice cream,” Clay Risen said. “People are not getting poisoned by soft drinks or ice cream. It won’t happen with Fireball either.”

Mostly crap processed food you shouldn’t be eating in the first place, Bubba Clay.

Sazerac insists Fireball Whisky is perfectly safe to drink. Still, this bad publicity could end up burning them.

The FDA allows about 50 grams per kilogram of propylene glycol in foods.

Like I said above, you shouldn’t be consuming most processed foods in the first place. You’re just guaranteeing an abundance of salt, sugar, artificial flavorings – and propylene glycol in your body. I have enough in the radiator of my old pickup truck for the winter. That’s sufficient.

Thanks, Mike

Shot with stun gun by coppers – man turns into human fireball

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Andrew Pimlott

A man has died after being shot with a police Taser while dowsed in flammable liquid…Andrew Pimlott, 32, turned into a human fireball after he was zapped by officers called to his home to investigate a domestic incident.

They found Andrew in the back garden covered in liquid and holding a can of fluid…An officer deployed the Taser and Andrew immediately burst into flames…

Andrew suffered serious burns and was rushed to hospital after the incident in Honicknowle, Plymouth, last Thursday.

Police initially said his injuries were not life-threatening…But the Independent Police Complaints Commission revealed today that Andrew died from his injuries in Frenchay Hospital, Bristol, on Tuesday…

IPCC Commissioner Sarah Green said…“Our investigation will be looking at what information was known to the officers attending the scene, the officer’s rationale for discharging a Taser on a person known to be dowsed in flammable liquid, whether the discharge of the Taser caused the fuel to ignite, and we will look at training and policies.”

How do you get to be ignorant of the explosion or fire danger coincident to firing a Taser at a flammable liquid?

When a couple of trains carrying gasoline and oil collide…

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Wow!

In much of the world, trains are the best, most modern, fuel-efficient and least polluting means of freight and passenger transport.

In much of the world – they are leftover from industrialization a century ago, colonial empire-building even older. Lacking modern safety technology and design, they can be as lethal and harmful as the worst tanker-bomb ever devised.

The United States mostly fits into the latter category. As does Poland. A shame – for there really is no excuse other than governments acting almost exclusively on behalf of some claque of corporate interests or slovenly politicians or both.

Get the most out of the meteor show

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This year’s Perseid meteor shower is shaping up as a beaut. The big night is next Thursday, but anytime now is a great time for skywatching – not only to see shooting stars, but to see the planets as well.

The Perseids are among the year’s best-known meteor showers, especially for mid-northern latitudes. Here’s why: The show begins ramping up in late July and hits its peak around Aug. 12-13, when it’s usually pleasant to hang around outdoors in the northern hemisphere. Perseid meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, which is high up in the sky at about 3:30 a.m. in northern latitudes – prime time for meteor watching.

But the big attraction comes down to how many shooting stars you can see: During this time of year, Earth plows through the trails of space grit that have been laid down by Comet Swift-Tuttle as it makes its 130-year orbit around the sun. When those particles of grit zip through the upper atmosphere, they heat up and create those bright streaks we all know and love.

Fortunately for meteor-watchers, there’s a lot of grit out there…

Skywatchers have tracked the Perseids for centuries….The sky conditions are nearly ideal for this year’s show, because the moon will be just a few days past its new phase. When the moon is full, its glare overwhelms the meteor flashes in the night sky, making viewing problematic. But this year’s crescent moon will be far below the horizon by midnight, when the meteor show enters prime time.

I’ve already seen one phenomenal fireball. It was an evening with a solid – but high up – overcast. A beautiful red fireball dropped from the bottom of the overcast and followed a visual track just as if it was a flare dropped from an airplane. Which meant it was proceeding directly away from me.

Stayed solid and glowing red till it disappeared beyond my sight line. Over the apparent horizon which, in my case, was a line of hills less than 10 miles away. Outstanding.

North Texans sighting fireballs speeding toward Earth

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Fiery debris from a falling satellite burned through the Texas sky Sunday morning, alarming some and enchanting others but resulting in no apparent injury or damage.

From Dallas to Austin and beyond, sightings were reported of a red and orange fireball with a small black center speeding toward Earth before burning out in a trail of lingering white smoke.

Roland Herwig, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration’s southwest division, confirmed that the fireball was probably superheated debris from a broken satellite falling to earth.

The FAA could not directly link the debris to last week’s reported collision of Russian and U.S. communications satellites, however.

“It’s yet to be proved it’s those satellites,” Herwig said.

It’s also unclear exactly how many pieces of debris tumbled toward Texas or whether any more are on the way.

The potential danger from satellite debris did prompt the FAA on Saturday to warn pilots nationwide to be aware of the hazard and to immediately report any sightings.

One of my “big blog”-fellow editors is a Texas-based astronomer. He emailed me, saying, “Visual only, Friday night. Glowing tail, slow moving. Pretty neat.”

UPDATE: FAA says it was a meteor. For whatever that’s worth.

10-ton rock responsible for fireball in western Canada

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Investigation of the fireball that lit up the skies of Alberta and Saskatchewan on November 20 has determined that an asteroid fragment weighing approximately 10 tonnes entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the prairie provinces last Thursday evening.

The fireball first appeared approximately 80 kilometres above and just east of the border city of Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan, and traveled SSE towards the Battle River valley fragmenting spectacularly in a series of explosions. The fireball penetrated the atmosphere at a steep angle of approximately 60 degrees from the horizontal and lasted about five seconds from 17:26:40 to 17:26:45 MST with the largest explosion at 17:26:44. The fireball was recorded on all-sky and security cameras scattered across Saskatchewan and Alberta in addition to being witnessed by tens of thousands of people who saw it streak across the sky, saw its arc- welding blue flash, or heard the subsequent explosions.

The asteroid fragment is now known to have weighed approximately 10 tonnes when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere from an energy estimate derived from infrasound records by Dr. Peter Brown, at the University of Western Ontario. Infrasound is very low frequency sound produced by explosions that can travel thousands of kilometers.

“At least half a dozen infrasound stations ranging from Greenland to Utah, including Canada’s Lac Du Bonnett, Manitoba and Elgin Field, Ontario stations, recorded energy from the fireball’s explosions. The indicated energy is approximately one third of a kiloton of TNT,” Brown said.

Brown also says that a fireball this size only occurs over Canada once every five years on average. About ten fireballs of this size occur somewhere over the Earth each year.

Latest reports indicate discoveries of meteorite fragments near the Alberta/Saskatchewan border, near Lloydminster.

Asteroid hits Earth … but at least we predicted it, say scientists

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Fireball during the Leonid meteor shower

Scientists were today celebrating the first successful prediction of an asteroid smashing into the Earth’s atmosphere.

The chunk of space debris burst in a spectacular fireball though it was no more than 15ft across. And it had an impact out of all proportion to its size as it enabled experts to prove they could warn of potentially catastrophic asteroid strikes…

‘It’s the first time we’ve been able to predict an impactor in advance,’ said Donald Yeomans, manager of Nasa’s Near Earth Object programme, which tracks asteroids and comets that come close to our planet.

Tim Spahr, head of Harvard’s Minor Planet Centre, added: ‘If this were something larger and it was going to hit the ground we would be able to get people out of the way.’

The asteroid – labeled 2008 TC3 – was spotted yesterday a little farther away from Earth than the Moon by a U.S. observatory in Arizona.

I spotted the earlier articles, yesterday; but, decided to wait until the event took place and was observed – to Post about the asteroid. I’ll bet there are a number of observers who acquired decent still photos and video footage.

I’ll keep checking and eventually replace the stock image I used up top.