Meteor Triggers Hiroshima-Sized Kaboom

Mike Van Pelt writes: "Right in the midst of the tensions surrounding the spy plane incident in China, military instruments detected a bright flash and a nearly Hiroshima-sized blast in the ocean off Los Angeles. Turns out it was a meteor. (nytimes.com requires free registration for access.)" Scary.

Comments

How nervous are military people really?

[JanneM]

As said in the article, it wasn't even a ground (sea) hit, merely a piece of rock disintegrating in the atmosphere. And yet, the first thing happening is an increase in the nuclear readiness detection systems of the largest nuclear force of the world.

The risk of a 'retailation' was, of course, nil; however, imagine a larger piece exploding at or near a major population center in the US, and I would be worried that a 'retaliatory' strike would be launched at enemy X (whoever X is at the time) before the real couse of the incident would be determined.

I hope I'm wrong.

/Janne

Re:How nervous are military people really?

[Dancin_Santa]

Believe me, the launch codes are not in the hands of idiots.

Famous last words. ;-)

Dancin Santa

Re:How nervous are military people really?

[SEWilco]

An atomic blast in the atmosphere also has a distinctive double flash. The first flash is from the X-ray emission from the blash causing the air to fluoresce. The second flash is an incandescent glow from the heat.

The satellites which are equipped with bhangmeters [sic] do detect these blasts. You might remember the Israeli test which was detected in 1979.

Re:How nervous are military people really?

[pubudu]

There are also protocol to be followed before nuclear weapons are armed and fired, which prevent a launch unless it is 100% verified as a nuclear explosion or missile launch at the USA has taken place.

Actually, there are protocols to be followed before nuclear weapons are armed and fired, which prevent a launch unless it is 100% verified that POTUS has authorized a launch. There is nothing in U.S. law, U.S. protocols, or U.S. policy that prevents a first strike. While the implimentation of these protocols gives some time between order and launch, in which time the launch order may be recinded, they do not at all prevent, nor are they intended to prevent, a launch in the absence of a previous strike. The presence of a nuclear attack is necessary only if the commander is to launch upon his own authority; the commander may be ordered to launch at any time.

Remember that the Soviets had 100+ divisions facing Western Europe; NATO, at its height, had 16. U.S. policy has always been to threaten possible escalation to nuclear exchange if an attack were underway, and no President has seen fit to alter our nuclear stance. We operate under strategic ambiguity for a reason.

Re:How nervous are military people really?

[Darth Turbogeek]

One of the things distingusing a meteor blast and a first strike blast would be the fact you dont pick up missile launches by satellite. Even tho cruise missile fly low, they're launches are readily detectible. There are also protocol to be followed before nuclear weapons are armed and fired, which prevent a launch unless it is 100% verified as a nuclear explosion or missile launch at the USA has taken place.

Even political hotheads think twice when the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is introduced. Believe me, the launch codes are not in the hands of idiots.

Re:How nervous are military people really?

[Dancin_Santa]

Seeing as how the Pentagon knew that it was not a nuclear strike, I'd be more worried that some hothead in the White House would shoot his mouth off before receiving actual verification one way or the other.

Dancin Santa

Re:How nervous are military people really?

[$hotgun]

Regardless of the anti-military bullshit you may see from Hollywood, let me assure you that your average military officer is a paranoid SOB...but not of some 'enemy', but paranoid of going to war.

The average grunt is a recent high-school graduate who has been brainwashed through a very efficient indoctrination called 'boot camp'. These guys do not have access to 'the button', and no officer would ever let them near it during peacetime.

The average officer is a college graduate with a family. He wants to grow old with his wife and see his kids graduate college. He will be much more mature (because he's older) on average.

Officers with access to 'the button' are senior officials. They will probably have grandchildren. They've had to survive years of keeping a cool head under political pressure. They've had to prove themselves as able thinkers and strategist time and time again. People who blow up at the first signs of danger do NOT make it to senior positions (rarely past Captain), 'cause blowing up tends to cause more problems than it solves and pisses off those higher in the chain of command (the same ones deciding on who gets an advancement) The senior officers that I have met tend to not like the indoctrinated hotheads, and considers them simpletons.

So, to sum up, "military people" covers a lot of different attitudes and persuasion, but be assured that the ones with access to "the button" won't be launching one until it is known and confirmed three different ways that country X fired a YMegaton weapon from facility Z.

Re:Is this the same event?

[Kris_J]

That hasn't been working for me for a while...

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Re:Is this the same event?

[ASCIIMan]

channel.nytimes.com

yeah, and this one is in the top five brightest...

[heliocentric]

The meteors were unusually big, between 6 and 10 feet in diameter (depending on your news source). Each year, listening stations at the lab record an average of 10 meteors 6 feet in diameter or greater. Those that appear as huge fireballs in the sky, like the April and August specimens, are known as bolides.

However this one is special:

"That meteor was one of the five brightest ever recorded," Los Alamos scientist Doug ReVelle said.

Re:early detection

[CyberDong]

Imagine something only 80 feet across causing this kind of reaction. Then imagine something much larger.

Actually, the article says this was nowhere near that big...

The speeding boulder was perhaps 12 feet wide, he added.

But it IS kinda scary thinking that they do get that much bigger...

The rocky objects are anywhere from a few feet to about 80 feet wide

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Re:A little misleading...

[CyberDong]

And there's also the fact that most telescopes are focused on something WAY OUT THERE. There are very few scopes looking at near-Earth asteroids. I don't remember the numbers, but I'm pretty sure it's less than 10% of the sky that's covered in any one night. It's a low-budget item for the powers-that-be.

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Re:early detection

[jmichaelg]

something only 80 feet across...

According to the original source, the bolide was 10 feet across, not 80 feet.

I've seen estimates of the 1908 Tunguska bolide being somewhere around 150 feet across. That bolide's explosion destroyed some 2000 square miles. The difference in damage is a function of the bolide's radius cubed so a doubling of the radius octuples the bolide's kinetic energy, assuming similar materials and velocities. There's a lot of uncertainty in these kinds of calculations because nobody knows much about the bolides in question. All that was left of the Tunguska event was a lot of destroyed landscape and in the case of the April 23 event, some recorded booms and flashes.

Poor man's anti-missile defense strategy

[xmark]

Note to Rogue States: Disguise warheads of ICBMS to look like 6-10 ft rocks. Cf. HBO featurette "Making of Armageddon" for further details.

Is this the same event?

[Kris_J]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/space/20010525/sc/lis tening_for_nukes_a_meteor_detection_project_1.html

(I hate nytimes' registration crap, so I haven't read the story linked-to above.)

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Rain of Iron and Ice

[Detritus]

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject. Part of the book includes the results of computer simulations on the probability and effects of impacts of extraterrestrial objects. A large number of objects "blow up" when they hit the atmosphere. The stress of atmospheric contact is so large that they disintegrate. Sort of like doing a belly flop at 1000 meters/second.

A little misleading...

[Dancin_Santa]

The explosion occurred over the ocean in the atmosphere. The meteor did not hit the ocean. Except for really really large rocks, these guys hit our atmosphere, blow up, and turn to molten powder. We'd likely notice a "doomsday" meteor a little earlier than these little surprises.

Dancin Santa

Re:A little misleading...

[kachuik]

Actually about half the sky at any one time is useless to telescopes. (That would be the daylight part of the sky.) Anything comming out of the sun is invisible until it slams into the Earth.

If the meteor is strong enough to survive passing through most of the atmosphere, the shockwave from the air burst would flatten any city in the way.

There are far more small chunks of rock than big ones. We will probably loose a bunch of cities before we even find a "doomsday" asteroid.

Re:A little misleading...

[Yazeran]

And then again, perhaps not.
I once read (some 10 years ago) about how astronomers suddently discovered an astroid about 100 m in diameter as it was going away from the earth. Turned out it had passed within half the distance between earth and the moon, and they only found it after the close aproach.

If something that size hits a populated area (or ocean) then the toll in lives would be huge, as somethig that big would not airburst, but would penetrate the ground and create a crater at least 10 km wide. (not counting the firestorm and shockwave that propagate further out).

They didn't detect it before close aproach, as it was a rather dark object. One wonders how many other such objects is out there..

Yours Yazeran

Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.

Re:early detection

[hyehye]

This item is related to an earlier post of mine. This event is exactly what I was talking about, and what the Discovery (it wasn't TLC, I was wrong) show was talking about. Example:

Preliminary estimates, Dr. ReVelle said, are that the cosmic intruder was the third largest since the Pentagon began making global satellite observations a quarter century ago. Its explosion in the atmosphere had nearly the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Imagine something only 80 feet across causing this kind of reaction. Then imagine something much larger.

No offense, but

[spacefem]

How do we position ourselves so the next one hits LA? I'm a little dissapointed this one missed, we could have improved upon so many problems (energy crisis, spontaneous riots, not to mention whatever hapless celebrities are lucky enough to get hit...)

I'm sorry, sis, the entire cast of the Young and the Restless was taken out by that nasty meteor, we'll just have to watch Star Wars again...