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In The Shooting Star, the great heat that comes off the meteorite is a recurring theme. Even though the shooting star lands in the freezing waters of the Arctic, all the icebergs around it melt.

When Snowy is joining Tintin on the star / island, he find the sea water so hot that it is painful. But when he steps onto the island, he doesn't burn his paws.

Surely the water is hot because of the meteorite, and it the waters of the arctic are still scalding hot, the island would be much hotter.

I know that I should not expect scientific accuracy and consistency in Tintin books, but this, is seems to me, isn't so much scientific inconsistency as something that people simply know (not just modern scientifically educated people, but people back in stone age, I suspect) from their everyday experience of life.

Since Snowy getting scalded isn't actually an important part of the story, I'm a little surprised that Hergé put this in.

So - am I being over-fussy, or have I missed something, or is this an odd lapse on Hergé's part.

I think the most reasonable explanation would be that Phostlite has some strange thermal properties that allow the surface of the meteorite to remain cool enough to walk on while the water around it is heated. Perhaps the upper surface is composed mostly of Phostlite and insulates the surface from the heat of the iron (?) remainder of the meteorite.

CC

What an interesting topic - well spotted, Aristide!

I like the sound of Captain Chester's thinking; I'd also add that perhaps the heat of the meteorite isn't the result of friction in the atmosphere (the Captain's suggestion here that Phostilite is a good insulator would explain this), but is instead the product of a chemical reaction with the sea water, or something in the sea water such as another mineral? My chemistry is as ever rather vague, but I think an exothermic reaction could be at play.

The idea of a chemical reaction is an interesting one. Could it be something like the reaction between water and metals like sodium and potassium, but not quite as violent or rapid?

The two of you have come up with a most convincing explanation. After all, what we know about Phostlite from the book tells us that its properties are (to put it mildly) very unusual. Under those circumstances, strange thermal or chemical properties would surely be expected. [I just wonder whether Hergé thought of that. ;-)]

I might add that under the circumstances, it is totally amazing that Tintin and Snowy didn't come to grief as a result of their exposure to this extremely hazardous substance. One suspects that the leaders of the expedition were extremely careless with regard to performing a risk assessment. I would imagine that under current EU law, if anything had happened to Tintin and Snowy, the officers of the European Foundation for Scientific Research would have found themselves in court.

A good point, Aristide, the way the apple core causes the trees to appear and the insect and spider mutate into huge monsters would suggest some kind of radioactivity.

Does anyone know when suits to protect people from radioactivity were first developed?

On a related note: when the meteorite crashes into the ocean, shouldn't it have caused tsunamis rather than an earthquake?

Having an interest in astronomy I think I can answer both these questions

1) Why was the water hot when the meteorite was not?
The best guess I can offer is that as has been suggested before phostlite may have properties akin to alkaline metals (which react with water)

2) When the meteorite crashes into the ocean, shouldn’t it have caused tsunamis rather than an earthquake?
Looking at my copy I have the following information "The meteor passed 48,000km from the earth". Therefore the meteorite found in the polar regions was just a section of the main meteor. This section was enough to generate an earthquake of magnitude six (working on the USGS shake guides) presumably in Belgium. The most recent mag six quake as recorded by the USGS (to generate a shake map) was in Turkey and there you only had to go a small way away from the epicentre to see mags fall as low as 4 (which is 100 times less intense), therefore I would expect that the meteor landed in the Arctic Ocean in an area with such depth as not to generate a tsunami at all

Wouldn't the meteor sink without a trace into ocean that deep? Or did it maybe split into two in the atmosphere, one piece causing the earthquake when reaching the bottom of the ocean, one smaller piece either floating or falling onto a small island which then collapsed after few weeks?

Oh no, I can't think of a plausible explanation.

edit: I might have misunderstood Harry's post, did you mean that meteor landed in the shallow water, surrounded by deeper waters which stopped the tsunami? Or something else? (I have no proper understanding of earthquakes, tsunamis and such).

edit2: cleaned the language.

I don't fully understand tsunamis myself (just a passing knowledge) but meant that the meteorite (once a meteor enters the earth's atmosphere it becomes a meteorite) landed in a part of the Arctic with such force as to generate a tsunami (but which by the time it reached populated land only saw the water rise by a matter of inches)