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Tunguska Blast Was a Small Asteroid
malachiorion writes "The Tunguska event, an explosion on June 30, 1908, cleared an 800-sq.-mi. swath of Siberian forest. Was it a UFO crash? An alien weapons test? Now, Sandia National Laboratories has released its own explanation for the Tunguska event. Using supercomputers to create a 3D simulation of the explosion, the Department of Energy-funded nuke lab has determined that Tunguska was, indeed, the explosion of a relatively small asteroid. The simulation videos are well worth checking out — they show a fireball slamming into the earth from the asteroid's air burst. The researchers caution that we should be keeping watch for many more small, potentially earth-impacting asteroids than we are currently tracking."
Imagine a world where a small asteroid fragment or comet had struck Russia 60 years after Tunguska - during the depths of the Cold War. It would be a very different world today indeed.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
I'm currently reading Arthur C. Clarke's 'Rendezvous with Rama', which opens with the lines "Soon or later, it was bound to happen. On June 30, 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometers -- a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe."
In the book, we humans then go on to set up systems to track asteroids that may be a danger to earth, and set up defense systems against them. I know that we currently track some, but how well funded are these organizations that do this? This is really something that is quite important, as it is almost certainly just a matter of when, not if. Do we have systems in place that will allow us to destroy or divert any large asteroids that are determined to be on a path to impact with earth?
I've often wondered how the populations (including the military) in some of the more... nervous areas of the globe would react to a suddden blinding light in the sky followed by an enormous blast wave.
Well the military wouldn't know who to attack, but you can be sure as hell someone would say "God did this because we made him angry by -insert reason here-"
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
OK, we shouldn't expect media people to know everything, but we are very poorly served by their almost total scientific ignorance. I suspect that politicians would have become interested in global warming much sooner were the mass media not so piss poor at explaining scientific issues to the public, and almost perversely proud of it.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"Also, possibly a country where it's important to keep appearances - leaders must be seen to be in charge, so they would react quicker than a thorough investigation would require. I can't think of many like that. North Korea maybe?"
Strikes me that America fits the bill admirably. Bush would order an attack on Iran faster than you could blink if this happened in Wyoming....
What strikes me (excuse the pun) is that now they've determined it was an asteroid the attitude is "oh well these things happen - at least it wasn't someones big secret weapon".
Ok, so let me ask, whats the difference?
If it was a big super weapon like a Nuke everyone would be panic strikken. Because it was just a asteroid there is no reason to worry. Lets not forget that large enough asteroids could wipe out the entire planet (not just one or 2 countries like our nukes..)
On the trail of common sense, why is a football player a hero, yet we have troops in Iraq that are only recognised as a hero once they arrive home in a wooden box with lots of press coverage?
The world has gone completely mad..
Summaries on
You wont add "Is it the by homeopathy? Ayurveda perhaps" to an article on a new medicine/cure..
Editors/Firehosers note.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
Honestly, I've spent ages writing insightful, interesting, funny comments only to have them modded down, and that's all it takes to get a +5? Frigging 'Badly.'?
Ye gads.
I'm less concerned about a single city, which would be devastating but survivable.
What scares me more was the (2004?) near-miss of an asteroid that could have hit somewhere in Pakistan or India precisely when they were in the middle of a very tense standoff. With immature command/control systems, what are the odds that would escalate into a nuclear shooting war, which would kill not the 10's or 100's of thousands of a single strike, but the 10's or 100's of MILLIONS of the resulting conflict.
THAT'S terrifying.
-Styopa
After that animal crackers scene, I'd rather put my faith in Robert Duvall and his team of young, but dedicated, astronauts.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I think you've confused asteroids with large lizards and flying sea monsters.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."