KFO

[FBM]

Let's see. You jump out of the plane, freefall for a bit, then pull the ripchord. Your horizontal progress is now very slow. The plane has been travelling away from you while you fell and floated and should be receding in the distance. The stone would have had to fall off the plane after you jumped, because it came from above. So how could it zip past you at the angle in the video from a receding plane? If it popped out of the parachute, we would have a similar problem explaining its velocity relative to the camera, I think.

[FBM]

I think there is now a valid explanation for it being a rock from the the chute.

Quote:
Let’s get straight to the conclusion. The good news: The crowdsourcing was a success. The bad news: There is no meteorite. It was a rock accidentally packed into the parachute. But how? It was a scenario considered from the beginning and it kept haunting us until the time we went public, as Anders told in the TV interview. Despite much effort, we saw no way to reconcile this scenario with the videos. The rock was clearly falling from well above the parachute. It did not seem to accelerate as if released from the parachute. It fell several seconds after the parachute had fully deployed. So what did we miss? The riddle quickly cracked under the pressure of the numerous fresh eyes now looking at the problem. Several people were able to point out the important clue that made the pieces fall into place.

We think we can reconstruct what happened: A pebble, a few cm in size at most, was accidentally caught inside the parachute at the landing site after the previous jump. Then the parachute was packed on a clean floor and the pebble was not noticed. Then Anders made the jump with the stowaway. This is a wingsuit dive and he’s travelling fast northwards at an downward angle of approximately 40 degrees. When he releases the parachute, the wind catches it and it shoots out to the south of him. The parachute is held back by the cords, but the pebble is not. The pebble is now increasingly getting further south and further above Anders. However, the parachute then slows Anders down, he makes a 250 degree clockwise rotation and at this moment the pebble happens overtake him. It had now been falling for a few seconds and was no longer accelerating much.

http://norskmeteornettverk.no/wordpress/?p=1497

Ah. Wingsuit. Forgot about that.

[mistermack]

If it popped out of the parachute, we would have a similar problem explaining its velocity relative to the camera, I think.

I don't see any problem with it's velocity, if it came out of the parachute. If it was at the top, it would come out some distance above the man. And if it was small, it would have more drag per gram than the man. So until the chute opened fully, the man could be falling faster. Then, when the chute opens, the pebble is falling much faster, so it shoots past. Something similar could happen to a stone that fell off one of the plane's tyres.