Initial estimates of the meteorite that slammed into Chelyabinsk, Russia last week pegged it at about 10 tons. It turns out to have been much larger than that.
The meteor that crashed to earth in Russia was about 55 feet in diameter, weighed around 10,000 tons and was made from a stony material, scientists said, making it the largest such object to hit the Earth in more than a century.
Several landing sites, but no large fragments, have been found yet.
When it exploded due to pressure and friction in the atmosphere, it released about 500 kilotons of explosive energy, about 30 times the size of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. So it was a city killer, and had it struck in a more populated area, the devastation would have been enormous. We dodged another massive bullet.
Like I said last week:
According to simulations done by astronomers a few years back, we can expect a Tunguska-scale event about once every 100 years. Some plans are on the board to build early detection systems, but right now Americans have a hard enough time tearing ourselves away from distractions long enough to focus on more immediate national security threats. I’d bet the odds are against us taking this threat seriously enough to fund it.
My favorite demotivator from Despair Inc.
When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it’s really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. then you are pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it’s death by meteor.
Somebody needs to gather up the fragments, cram them into a solid silver Cadillac tailfin, stick that in a big black cube, and start a new religion.
Seriously, the way all these rational, scientifically-knowledgeable people are going on about this chunk of space debris, you’d think they were a bunch of Arabian desert nomads.
Seriously, the way all these rational, scientifically-knowledgeable people are going on about this chunk of space debris, you’d think they were a bunch of Arabian desert nomads.
Huh? Are you seriously comparing people who are interested in scientific knowledge to the worship of a rock in Mecca?
No, I’m laughing at the superstitious awe that I heard emanating from NPR commentators over the last few days, and thinking how much the “party of science” that is overrepresented on NPR sounds like a bunch of Muslims.
Remember, reality is kind of like those coffee beans that aren’t drinkable until they’ve been digested and pooped out by a cat. We ordinary folks wouldn’t know what to do with reality if it weren’t for NPR, and other organizations made up of people who think about important things much more than we do, telling us what everything means.
More Pew Pew Pew… That is very funny. But maybe people need more praying in pews pews pews, because I think the scientists are far too sanguine about their statistics and statements. Somewhere along the way scientists stopped being scientists and became spokespeople with axes to grind.
Rather than speaking circumspectly, as men of science once did, we see them make definitive statements, and make them emphatically. AGW is a prime example when the science is antsy thing but settled, but there are lots of examples from the Food Pyramid, matters of religion, etc. I think this tends to make scientists advocates for positions rather than curious about phenomena.
Today we are told that this should statitically happen once every hundred years. We are told the recent comet was the largest/closest approach “in history”. Huh? We still don’t monitor the oceans which cover 3/4 of the earth. Primitive places like Africa or the planetary poles aren’t filled with security cameras, cell phones and dashcams.
We were assured by Nasa that the comet and this huge meterite had absolutely nothing to do woth each other. Huh? How can they possibly know for certain. They also agt as if these things don’t travel in huge cluttered packs through space. We don’t have anything approaching the granularity in our tracking systems to possibly know!
You’re mixing up terms. There wasn’t a comet involved last week, just a meteor that passed about 16,000 miles from the Earth and another that exploded over a Russian city. They say they weren’t connected because the meteors (or asteroids) were on different trajectories. These things can’t maneuver.
Your point about the one that exploded being the biggest in 100 years is somewhat valid. The Tunguska explosion took place in 1908, decades before satellites and when more of the Earth was sparsely populated. Military launch detection satellites can detect more than rockets, they can detect things entering the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed. Those satellites have been operational for decades. Between Tunguaka and the advent of those satellites, there could’ve been other explosions over the ocean that no one witnessed, so no on can definitively say the one that exploded last Friday was the biggest one in 100 years. It’s just the biggest one we know about.
Funding it depends on whether Gore or some other marxists decide that they can con a few billions out of it. There will be a much stronger chance, of course, if a scientific consensus can be declared that population control will be required.
Surely computer models can prove that these events will occur every couple of months in the future instead of every 100 years. That should be a piece of cake. Doesn’t AGW attract asteroids? All that additional carbon must have a magnetic effect on space rocks.
Funding it depends on whether Gore or some other marxists decide that they can con a few billions out of it.
That, unfortunately, is correct. And so far, the answer is no. It would only take a few million bucks to put the right satellites up and keep them monitored for years. At this point a few private citizens could pull it off, and they may.
Why couldn’t this thing have hit Meca?