Hundreds Injured In Russia Meteorite Near-Miss
- Thread starter Karloff
- Start date
You would be surprised. Its quite possible that the two rocks were created in the same collision a few mission years ago or such, and so were sent on similar orbital paths around the sun. We were just lucky that it was the smaller one that happened to be aimed slightly more towards us.Beryl77 said:
The size impacts of the larger one, the one that's going to pass us, happens more often than you may think. The Tunguska event was about that size, and events that sound similar have been recorded for a good couple of thousand years.
EDIT: After looking for a bit more info, a number of people/organisations, including the ESA, have declared that the two meteors are probably not related, on account of travelling in vastly different directions.
This is an amazing video of the meteor.
Cool, kinda terrifying, but cool. Though our news site says 950 injured...
Cool, kinda terrifying, but cool. Though our news site says 950 injured...
No, we'll see planet killers. Meteorites won't destroy us. Extremely large meteorites can level cities, sure, but they'll never end our planet. It's asteroids that'll kill us. Though we're not dinosaurs, so even impacts large enough to alter our climate wouldn't kill us off completely. And anything that large, we'd probably be able to nuke anyway.itsthesheppy said:
I don't have the quotes in front of me, but I'm pretty sure astronomers more educated than I have made it clear that we don't have that many eyes on the sky, and that a planet-killer could easily sneak up on us.Denamic said:
Just FYI ... that's Phil Plait.
His "Bad Astronomy" blog is here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html
His "Bad Astronomy" blog is here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html
Not really. If we say an extinction level asteroid has to be at least 1KM across that's over 4 Billion cubic metres of rock (assuming it's spherical). Even firing the entire nuclear arsenal of the world combined (even borrowing the ones N. Korea has) would barely slow it down - worse it could shatter it into hundreds of smaller (but still massive) chunks that cause even more damage; think of it like buckshot from a shotgun - hundreds of individual fragments slamming into the Earth all across the surface.Denamic said:
If we spot an extinction level asteroid heading right for us:
It'd be a case of gtfo or go back to a population of less than 10 thousand.
Consider the fact that Russia, as a land mass, is huge (bigger if you include all of Asia). Its like shooting an arrow at a target with the big white space around your target representing Russia and the board holding up your target being the ocean. You have 50/50 chance of hitting the ocean, or Russia.flarty said:
Plus I'm sure Tunguska wasn't the only time they got hit.
Kmadden2004 said:
OT: that bang was epic! It's unbelievable that the actual bang was created when the meteorite entered the atmosphere! A rock hitting air hard enough owns all!
Sorry, I just had to.
This is pretty scary. Imagine if it was the same size as the one that blew up over Tunguska. Then there is the added coincidence that it happened just hours before an asteroid passed us. It really feels like these close calls are starting to increase in frequency lately.
This is pretty scary. Imagine if it was the same size as the one that blew up over Tunguska. Then there is the added coincidence that it happened just hours before an asteroid passed us. It really feels like these close calls are starting to increase in frequency lately.
