ChrisReid said:Meteors become meteorites when they hit the Earth. This happens all the time. The weird part is the size, and it's not weird so much as unusual.
I have read that Hiroshima sized explosions from meteors happen, but are rarely seen because they happen over the ocean.
Yeah. Also, I'm looking for an insurance company that provides insurance against alien abduction .Ijuin said:Hopefully, seeing the effects of this meteorite will make a few more people realize the reality of the threat of meteor impacts and of the need to develop better spaceflight technology to deflect them before they hit.
Yes, the exact size of the Hiroshima bomb is hard to determine, but the two bombs used in WWII are the only ones that have been detonated over a populated area, and are thus our only detailed sample of what multi-kiloton explosions can do to populated areas.
Quarto said:Yeah. Also, I'm looking for an insurance company that provides insurance against alien abduction .
Bandit LOAF said:To the best of my knowledge we're *not* talking about what explosions can do to populated areas -- the meteorites in question haven't been flattening buildings.
Bandit LOAF said:To the best of my knowledge we're *not* talking about what explosions can do to populated areas -- the meteorites in question haven't been flattening buildings.
Ijuin said:My point is that an impact of this size can (and if we do nothing to prevent it, porbably WILL) happen on a populated area at least once within the next thousand years or so. We should at the very least be trying to get as accurate an image as possible of the extent of destruction that meteorites of this size can induce.
But there's absolutely nothing to back this view up - I certainly don't recall any historically-recorded meteorite impact that has ever significantly affected the human population. That's not to say it can't happen (obviously, when you're dealing with rocks falling out of the sky, anything can happen)... but "probably will" is a very excessive way of putting it. From a statistical point of view, there is a much, much bigger chance of a plane falling out of the sky right on top of your house than there is for a meteorite to ever hurt any human being.Ijuin said:My point is that an impact of this size can (and if we do nothing to prevent it, porbably WILL) happen on a populated area at least once within the next thousand years or so.