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

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.

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...