By Looks like we lucked out:
On 8 October an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That’s about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.
However, the blast caused no damage on the ground because of the high altitude, 15 to 20 kilometres above Earth’s surface, says astronomer Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Canada.
Brown and Elizabeth Silber, also of UWO, estimated the explosion energy from infrasound waves that rippled halfway around the world and were recorded by an international network of instruments that listens for nuclear explosions.
It’s a bit unnerving that, at any moment, our lives could be snuffed out by a large space rock.
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12 Comments
And, like the Spanish Inquisition, no one expects it…
Our weapons are fear, surprise, an almost ruthless devotion to the Pope and large space rocks! Amongst our weapons are such diverse elements as… I’ll come in again.
Bring in…the comfy chair!!!
I’d advise you never to read up on gamma ray bursts, then. The universe is pretty damned scary for a fragile sack of carbon and water.
Which is why every minute we still have is precious and to be treasured. We could all be extinguished in the blink of an eye!
There’s generally only about a dozen people world-wide on the lookout for dangerous asteroids and comets. A lot more effort goes into organising the World Gurning Championships than goes into saving us all from flying rocks.
The only thing that actually protects us is that we have very very short lives to begin with.
Geologically speaking, big rocks hit the Earth all the freaking time.
Well that’s consoling.
Sadly, the universe doesn’t care about our feelings.
If we keep depleting the ozone layer, there will be even less standing between us and total destruction.
¿? Ozone layer protects us from UV, it can do very little to protect us from big rocks
*Whew*
That was close!