Meteor Blast Over Bering Sea Was 10 Times Size of Hiroshima (theguardian.com) 89
A meteor explosion over the Bering Sea late last year unleashed 10 times as much energy as the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, scientists have revealed. From a report: The fireball tore across the sky off Russia's Kamchatka peninsula on 18 December and released energy equivalent to 173 kilotons of TNT. It was the largest air blast since another meteor hurtled into the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, in Russia's south-west, six years ago, and the second largest in the past 30 years. Unlike the Chelyabinsk meteor, which was captured on CCTV, mobile phones and car dashboard cameras, the December arrival from outer space went largely unnoticed at the time because it exploded in such a remote location. Nasa received information about the blast from the US air force after military satellites detected visible and infrared light from the fireball in December.
Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at Nasa, told BBC News that blasts of this size were expected only two or three times a century. The space agency's analysis shows that the meteor, probably a few metres wide, barrelled into Earth's atmosphere at 72,000mph and exploded at an altitude of 16 miles. The blast released about 40% of the energy of the meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, according to Kelly Fast, Nasa's near-Earth objects observations programme manager, who spoke at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science conference near Houston.
Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at Nasa, told BBC News that blasts of this size were expected only two or three times a century. The space agency's analysis shows that the meteor, probably a few metres wide, barrelled into Earth's atmosphere at 72,000mph and exploded at an altitude of 16 miles. The blast released about 40% of the energy of the meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, according to Kelly Fast, Nasa's near-Earth objects observations programme manager, who spoke at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science conference near Houston.
Conclusion: (Score:5, Funny)
Between Tunguska, Chelyabinsk, and now this, it's obvious to me that space hates Russia.
Re: (Score:3)
When a sizeable meteor hit populated areas, will we strike back MADly?
In theory, it should be very easy to distinguish a meteor impact from a nuke. Nukes produce gamma rays and an EMP. Meteors produce no gamma rays, and only a very weak EMP.
I have no idea if there is a mechanism in place to detect these differences in real time.
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In theory, it should be very easy to distinguish a meteor impact from a nuke.
Nukes also start on the ground. If we can detect launches then a "down" without a corresponding "up" should make a meteor easy to detect. If we can't detect launches then you can use all your fancy gamma ray detectors. ;-)
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Also, ICBMs travel at suborbital velocities (up to 7 km/s), while meteors come in at escape velocities (more than 11 km/s, usually much more). If you can get a radar track they're easy to distinguish.
And no, a clever attacker can't just make their ICBMs "go faster".
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When a sizeable meteor hit populated areas, will we strike back MADly?
Yes. Buenos Aires will be avenged.
Re:Conclusion: (Score:5, Funny)
But why does Russia get hit more than other countries? Over the last century, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, and Tuvala have had no impacts at all. How do you explain the disparity?
Re:Conclusion: (Score:5, Informative)
At roughly 17 million sq km, Russia is almost twice the size of the next largest country (Canada at 9.98 million sqkm)
As such, one would expect them to have proportionally more randomly placed things happening within their territory.
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While that makes some sense, Earth is a relatively small target in space. If it is generally following the ecliptic but just very slightly inclined or declined, it can definitely hit Earth from the top or the bottom. It's not immediately obvious to me that this random-walk effect is dominated by the near-coplanar orbits of Earth and its impactors.
So I looked it up.
* I found stackoverflow people asserting what you said without sources
* I found another site asserting that the main latitude difference was re
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BOOOM!
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*whoosh* ;)
Was that the joke going over your head, or a meteor?
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But then shouldn't Antarctica and Greenland get hit much more often, since they are more than half of the Earth's total landmass? /s
Yes, I hate the mercator projection.
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You just jinxed Canada. Thanks a lot.
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Putin: We are building and deploying hypersonic weapons.
Nature: Motherfucker, I will SHOW YOU hypersonic.
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That or loves Russia. What if its all a plot by Russia and Ebay to take complete ownership of the world?
How you ask? By selling lots of expensive bits of rock to every geek on the planet. The Science and Tech world will be completely oblivious to this little scheme as everyone runs around buying and collecting little fragments of unusual looking rock, complete with papers, facts, dates, and numbers, all at enormous market prices. Many many tons of it. Meanwhile, the rest of the world quietly ignores this w
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Between Tunguska, Chelyabinsk, and now this,/p>
But given they only come twice a century, it is good to know we are safe for the next 81 years.
Coolest Job Title Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Planetary Defense Officer. That'd be sweet on a business card.
Where's all the click-bait on what would it be like if this happened over a major population center?
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While there's obviously risk in something like this making the situation *worse*, it's a shame they weren't able to test out various mitigation strategies for something like this this time.
Inevitably, one of these will hit a(nother) heavily populated area, and it would be comforting to note that we might have a mechanism for doing something about it if we can predict it 30-90 minutes in advance.
In this case, something exploding over the Bering Strait might have been a candidate for testing re-direction effo
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Why bother ? On the global list of causes of death, getting hit by a meteor must rank pretty low, and it would be very costly to prevent. That's not a good use of the budget.
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That's not a good use of the budget.
I don't think the government knows what that sentence means judging by a ton of studies they funded in the past.
These were just the first results of a google search:
https://www.businessinsider.com [businessinsider.com]
https://www.nationalreview.com [nationalreview.com]
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However, I suspect that an unacknowledged reason for a wall is to eventually privatize it's operation and maintenance, like the US prisons.
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How do we know that they didn't?
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It almost beats Space Shuttle Door Gunner [shopify.com].
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Where's all the click-bait on what would it be like if this happened over a major population center?
Please read "Rendezvous with Rama"
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This is a record for slow news. What did they do, send the message by Inuit canoe?
Inuits use kayaks, not canoes.
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Obviously because the Inuit canoes are so much slower.
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Kayak does travel, but it's usually planes, trains and automobiles. Intuit does taxes.
I'm hear all week folks.
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What I am more curious is, why does it it seem meteors always hit Russia?
Yes it is the largest country in area, but still I don't remember any big explosions over Canada, the United States, China, Braille.
Re:Three months late (Score:5, Funny)
I don't remember any big explosions over Canada, the United States, China, Braille.
If it happened in Braille, we wouldn't see it.
Re:Three months late (Score:5, Funny)
If it happened in Braille, we wouldn't see it.
But we could feel the bump.
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I don't remember any big explosions over Canada, the United States, China
That's because the Men in Black erased your memory.
Anyone else notice (Score:1)
that the Goa'uld seem to targeting Russia?
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The FN P90 is not that primitive, is it?
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You must be new here.
Air bursts are actually fairly common (Score:5, Informative)
It's also worth noting that the ancient Egyptians also witnessed large meteor events and used the material to create jewelry for royalty [livescience.com] and ceremonial weapons [space.com].
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Canada is mostly deserted at higher latitudes
It isn't just higher latitudes, its everywhere in Canada. Canada ranks number 230 on a list of 241 defined regions sorted by population density. More people live in Tokyo than the entire country of Canada.
Re:Cue the Climate Change Crowd (Score:5, Funny)
But with climate change we can expect these much more often.
True. We can even calculate the expected increase.
The average temp of the earth's atmosphere is 14C or 287 K. So a 2 degree increase will expand the atmosphere by a factor of 2/287 or 0.7%. Since the atmosphere is roughy 100km deep, this is an extra 700 meters.
The mean radius of the earth is 6371 km, or 6471 including the atm, for a cross sectional area of 1.315e8 square km. With the extra 700 m, this will increase by 9060 sq km.
So with global warming we should expect a 0.02% increase in meteor impacts.
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Are you taking into account all the meteors that would have flown by a flat earth if they encountered it edge-on?
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Are you taking into account all the meteors that would have flown by a flat earth if they encountered it edge-on?
The reptile overlords would never send edge on meteors, since they can't be seen at the horizon and so would serve no purpose in fooling the populace.
Odd Thought (Score:2)
The old Soviet Union had a system known as " Dead Hand " whereupon it would auto-launch a retaliatory strike in the event it detected what it considered to be a nuclear attack on Soviet targets.
Considering the cosmos treats Russia as a Meteor Magnet, I wonder how this system would interpret an impact from a larger celestial body.
( Assuming it's online )
Be about right that Russia would get smacked with a building sized meteor only to trigger said system and nuke half the planet :|
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Dead Hand wouldn't automatically launch a nuclear attack - it's more sophisticated and complex than that. It had a number of sensors for radiation, communication link availability, and other things in multiple places. If enough sensors triggered (e.g. high radiation in Moscow, loss of communication with fleet command in Vladivostok, etc.) it would allow two operators in a bunker to launch a nuclear strike on pre-programmed targets. It isn't a doomsday device in the sense of automatically launching a reta
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But what if it hit Chernobyl after crossing the international date line on a leap year?
yikes! (Score:5, Funny)
Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at Nasa, told BBC News that blasts of this size were expected only two or three times a century.
Yet the last one was only six months ago!
What say you meteor-change deniers now??
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Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at Nasa, told BBC News that blasts of this size were expected only two or three times a century.
Yet the last one was only six months ago!
What say you meteor-change deniers now??
I read that as Earth's planetary defense normally has an intercept rate high enough that only 2-3 get through every 100 years. With 2 in the last 6-7 years, it sounds like Lindley Johnson isn't a very good planetary defense officer.
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With the blast occurring 16 miles above the sea, I'm not sure you can count that as "get through"
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It's kinda like the "hundred year floods" that come every 3-5 years.
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"or even a million 150 horsepower cars running for a hour."
Or, a single 150,000,000 HP car running.
Planetary Defense Officer? (Score:3, Funny)
Planetary Defense Officer! Tell me this isn't the coolest job title in all of human history! Imagine chatting at a bar. "What do you do for a living? Neurosurgeon? Rocket Scientist?" and you reply "No baby...Planetary Defense Officer. Y'know this Earth thing? Yeah, I defend that."
Its was the Bugs! (Score:2)
I tell you, it was the Bugs!
It will be Buenos Aires next!
Would you like to know more?