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10 meters? Wow.

There are varying claims as to how big the rock was that made the Barringer Crater, from about the size of a Volkswagon Beetle to 150 feet long. Certainly what impacted the Earth wasn't anywhere near 150 feet in any dimension.

Quite a lot of it probably did burn off, ablate or fragment, so starting out with something only 10 meters in diameter might not get you quite a big a crater as Barringer. But, as a result of that impact it was a bad day in the entire Southwest. Nobody really knows, but I would imagine ejecta landing in the area of San Francisco.

Easily a 10 meter rock hitting the Earth would destroy any city if it fell near it. Entirely. I suspect you would be picking up rocks that fell in Nashville should a 5 meter rock hit Chicago. With a 10 meter rock unless it fragmented or burned up you might be picking up stuff in Orlando after you put out all the fires - that ejecta would be pretty hot.

Why don't they just crash it into the Gobi?

If it's not planet-killer class, or even climate-disruptor class, and they bring it in on the right trajectory (from behind, please), to minimize the delta-v, they'd turn a wasteland into a (possibly literal) goldmine.

And there's prior art in nature. The meteor that created Meteor Crater was made of elemental iron, and the people who currently own it (yes, it's private property) are related to the people who staked the mining claim and attempted to find the meteor. Unfortunately, it spread out on impact, making it no more valuable than iron ore, and apparently worth less than charging people to stand around looking at the dent it made, or renting it out to people who want to test their space suits and planetary rovers in a spot that kinda sorta looks like it's on another planet. Silly, really. All of Earth came from space, and is still there. They could have tested that stuff in their own back yards and got the same effect...

Not necessarily... to wit, the level of science in 1908 (and the response time of the researchers) would mean that iridium would be virtually undetectable. Not to mention that the most-stable isotope has a half-life of only 73 days. At this point, they should be looking for concentrations of platinum or osmium.

Moreover, the Tunguska Event is largely thought to be an airburst phenomenon, and not a conventional meteor impact. TFA is accurate in this regard, as they refer to the alleged discovery as a “fragment” rather than an entire meteorite.

In all, TFP is what I call an “almost news” piece; it's not really news, it's just a foreshadowing of the potential for a fairly significant news piece to-come.

We'll be waiting while they go dig it out of the mud and see what it actually is.

We never get natural disasters here: hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes, ice/snow storms, etc.

Tornadoes can happen anywhere on the planet, not just in Kansas. Besides, Arizona could always get nailed by a second one of these.

Umm you don't think this would of wiped out people in Arizona if it was inhabited at the time? http://www.meteorcrater.com/

At least I can get behind outsourcing natural disasters. I'm sure other folks won't like it though.

If you consider geology "geeky" or at least fascinating, then Northern Arizona
is not to be missed. Underground lava tubes, cinder cones, The Canyon, plus don't forget Meteor Crater.

Death Valley, -282 ft

South Rim of Grand Canyon, ~7200 ft

Meteor Crater (between Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona

Too bad I wasn't measuring G's. It might have been tricky, though without some really good eq. I was more interested in playing around with my new GPS.

You can see the effects of a 150-foot piece. It's called Meteor Crater. Crater 2.4 miles in circumference.

I agree with the previous poster. Read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress for the classic rocks-from-space show. Follow it up with Footfall.