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Asteroid the 'Size of a Minivan' Exploded Over California

Posted by Unknown on from the alien-plot-to-assasinate-ken-grossman-foiled dept.

astroengine writes, quoting Discovery: "The source of loud 'booms' accompanied by a bright object traveling through the skies of Nevada and California on Sunday morning has been confirmed: it was a meteor. A big one. It is thought to have been a small asteroid that slammed into the atmosphere at a speed of 15 kilometers per second (33,500 mph), turning into a fireball, delivering an energy of 3.8 kilotons of TNT as it broke up over California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, classified it as a 'big event.' 'I am not saying there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California,' Cooke told Spaceweather.com. 'I am saying that the meteor possessed this amount of energy before it broke apart in the atmosphere. (The map) shows the location of the atmospheric breakup, not impact with the ground.' Interestingly, this event was bigger than asteroid 2008 TC3 that exploded over the skies of Sudan in 2008 after being detected before it hit."

6 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Exploding Minivans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Always said the damn things were dangerous

    1. Re:Exploding Minivans by EdIII · · Score: 5, Funny

      It wasn't a minivan though... remember this thing was clocked at 33,000 mph. When's the last time you saw a minivan even doing the speed limit?

  2. minivan by quenda · · Score: 5, Funny

    For all the foreigners saying "WTF is a minivan?", it is a large family vehicle, smaller than a mini-bus, like a VW Transporter (Combi) , about 10 hogsheads or 0.00001 Libraries of Congress.

    1. Re:minivan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      For all the Americans saying "WTF is an asteroid?", it is a big space rock made by Jebus 6000 years ago. It has as much blow-uppy power as millions of pounds of dynamite (the calorie equivalent of a billion gallons of Extreme HotPocket PizzaHut Lard Thins), and, if it were to hit California, could result in a a postponed airing of Dancing With the Stars. To prevent this, we must pray for an end to the liberal gay marriage agenda targeting our children in the public schools of Obamamerica, and make sure every patriot has a gun to send future asteroids back across the border before their lazy anchor meteorites take our jobs and food stamps. God bless the troops!

      Thankyouverymuch.

  3. The truth! by slashmydots · · Score: 5, Funny

    This stinks of a coporate cover up. They don't want you to know this but it was actually a Toyota Prius with a hybrid nuclear/tachyon engine that accelerated out of control in the year 2052 due to a software glitch and traveled back in time and...well you can pretty much put the rest together.

  4. Transformers by simoncpu+was+here · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Autobots have arrived!