Russian meteor strike!

We have come close at least a few times that where publicized, who knows how many times are classified.

Classic example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

asteroid=larger rock and metal
meteoroid=smaller rock and metal, possibly even a piece of an asteroid
meteor=meteoroid that burns up upon entering the atmosphere
meteorite=meteor that reaches the surface of earth

meteors are small, so hard to detect. There is the possibility with larger asteroids of influencing orbit enough to avoid collision.

And then there's the dinosaurs.....


Very exciting day! I love how everyone is talking about space. That was some amazing video footage.

I had a great time listening to Science Friday when a bunch of astronomers, astrophysicists and other geeks (nicest way possible) were counting down the nearest approach. Pretty cool to look up then & know that a great big ole' rock was winging past us at less than one tenth the distance btwn us and the moon.
Kinda puts some of our big problems & arguments into perspective. i.e. none of it really means much 'cause even put together we don't really amount to anything from a universal perspective.

Ok, so my WAG was bad. Subsonic network data puts the blast energy in the 300-500 kiloton of TNT range....about 20-30x the size of Hiroshima. This was apparently the biggest event since Tunguska, and typically occur 1-2 times per century, and then mostly over the ocean. Good thing it was a crumbly rock, so it broke apart at altitude....a few percent of these objects are solid-nickel-iron and at this blast energy would have left a nice hole in the ground (~1000' across) instead

One rule of thumb is that a 1 ton rock makes a blast like 1 ton of TNT....so this object likely weighed in at a third of a million tons. So that would work out to ~100-150 feet in diameter.

IF you are starting to worry about these things being dangerous.....the experts say the biggest risk is due to not to impact or airburst, but from tsunami's created by large events far out at sea.

I do wonder if the Russians thought about engaging it with their ABM system. They've got quite a good one (nuclear warheads even IIRC), and they should have been able to track this on the way in and realise it could cause a lot of damage on the ground (although they should have identified it as a meteorite). If they didn't, this may start them thinking about doing so in future...

Interesting.....one issue is that this object was prob moving several times faster than the leisurely speed of a sub-orbital warhead. I would think that would make 'rendezvous' go from hard to impossible. Does make you wonder if russian NORAD saw something unusual on their radar in real time...."that's no space station...that's a moon!"

And I thought the ABMs were just around a couple cities as specified by the ABM treaty....

I thought the treaty only allowed one site, in their case being Moscow. But didn't the treaty dissolve when Bush withdrew us from it?

Speed really isn't that big a problem with things like this - after all they predicted how far the recent asteroid would miss earth by 6 months in advance, and the mechanics aren't a lot different. Once you've done that it's a matter of getting a big enough firework in the way. Reaction time might be an issue though - I've heard figures of the object being in the atmosphere for ~30 seconds, which probably isn't enough time to react.

The Russians still have the Moscow site working, but it's a little unclear exactly how far it covers. There are also rumours that a lot of their more recent SAM systems (S-300 and S-400) have some sort of ABM capability.

By the time its in the atmosphere, blowing it up just turns one big explosion into a lot of little ones... Trading a slug for a shotgun.

I think the consensus thinking is that even blowing up a big asteroid way out in space does more harm than good, you would turn a dinosaur killer into 10,000 tunguskas and do as much if not more damage to the planet. The only way to use a nuke to protect us is to intercept it very far out and use a glancing blow that nudges the trajectory of the rock to miss altogether.

This guy just sounds like an asshat. Lemme guess, he thinks the world was created in six days roughly 6000 years ago too?

I think planting a clingon on the one that just passed us, and set to detonate after it's well away, would have been a smart move.

That must be a joke. Must be.

BB. That article has got to be a joke right? No way that's a serious piece. Fiction right? Close enough to April fools to begin now right? No way the chair of the science committee would say those things right?

You mean BB was just funnin' all of us? Who'd a thunk it?