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Asteroid the 'Size of a Minivan' Exploded Over California
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."
Always said the damn things were dangerous
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.
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.
NASA tracks space debris the size of a golf ball, why didn't they see this? This is yet another example of how asteroid detection need a higher priority.
The Autobots have arrived!
I think that the Minivan has joined Wales as effectively an SI unit. link
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They are probably going to have to look for a different one.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
'I am not saying there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California,' Cooke told Spaceweather.com.
Love that he has to pre-empt the sound bite stupidity of the press. Too bad t won't work and they'll publish the stupid headline anyway.
Anyone who has an interest in things smashing in to the earth (I do, it's some kind of very fascinating thing for me see: Thanatos) I recommend you check out this film, ideally on a screen absoloutely as large as possible.
Unless you were in the desert, you didn't get to see it. We had a whole party set to go see the meteor shower; it should've been a great night for it, given the new moon. Too bad there were dense fog advisories all night. I've seen some pretty cool pictures from Arizona though.
It is fairly easy to find this out from google.
Generally, no appreciable levels of radiation are found in meteorites. One meteorite which fell in Japan a few years ago had some measurable radioactivity.
http://www.meteoritelab.com/meteorites/#13
http://earth.s.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/ishiwata/labo/neagariUS.html
It hit in daylight over Reno-Tahoe.
Imagine if it had hit just a bit further west at night with clear weather. That would have resulted in a very bright flash at night and the aforementioned "rumbling and shaking" over the San Francisco Bay Area.
Now imagine that the orbital dynamics were such that this happened in 1982 instead of 2012. Then you get a bright flash and a rumble over a major metro area during the Cold War.
Most meteors you see are the size of grains of sand. This one was millions of times larger. "Millions of times larger than normal" is "a big one".
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
at least it was mini.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
We need to start calling asteroids "terrorists" and there needs to be oil found on one. We can waste a trillion dollars fighting a handful of poorly funded religious zealots and yet we struggle to maintain even minimal funding to track objects that can easily take out a city if not most of the life on the planet. I keep hearing how rare they are yet there have been several of these high altitude bursts fairly recently and Tunguska was a little over a hundred years ago. If Tunguska sized blasts happen once in a hundred years aren't we due for one? Also how do we know? We haven't been keeping track of them for a hundred years and even historical evidence is sketchy. The planet would barely notice a city sized blast if there weren't large numbers of people below it. Also it's math not established fact. We can go 200 years with no major strikes then have a dozen in a single year then no more for a thousand years and the statistics may still call them once in a hundred year events. None of us may live to see one yet they can happen at any time. Kind of like a lottery you don't want to win.
http://ktvn.images.worldnow.com/images/17652544_BG1.jpg
"Minivan from Space - bid starts at 20 000 $
Thats right the minivan you heard in the news. A unique, once in a lifetime opportunity to own a piece of history and space.
Slight signs of usage from entering the earths atmosphere make it even more authentic" This is your chance to buy the Minivan from space[tm]
Typical minivan driver, didn't even see a planet that was, well, the size of a planet before it was too late.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I can't remember the name, but there's a Larry Niven story about a similar incident (in this case the sun apparently going nova.) If you knew you had only 12 hours to live, what would you do?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Polenüberfallensmittelverzekering? Strassenbahnhaltestellelieferungswagen?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
....in where it landed. Meteorites are valuable, especially if linkable to a historic event.
In terms of significance, 100,000 tonnes (110,231 tons) of matter falls into Earth's atmosphere every year. This was 70 tonnes. Not a significant fraction of the total mass per year, but still quite respectable. Besides, you probably wouldn't want the yearly quota in one lump sum.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Are those Arachnids acting up again? Guess we better invade Klendathu once more before they can lob a bigger rock our way.
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Was out and about sunday night.
And I was geek enough to have noted the az/elevation at the time.
Azmith was 325 to 350 or so, and Elevation was 50 deg down to about 30 degrees.
It was losing rather large chunks midway through it's burn..very much not like your normal meteorite.
A meteor this big probably didn't vaporize: if you live in the area you should be on the lookout for pieces on the ground.
I hesitate to say this, because it's a large area with a lot of ordinary rocks lying around, so there's going to be a huge number of not-actually-a-meteorite finds. This site http://meteorites.wustl.edu/what_to_do.htm gives the basics on figuring out if you've found a meteorite or not.
This meteor appears to be bigger than the one that came down over Chicago in 2003: quite a few large pieces were found then. But it's much easier to find meteorites in urban areas.
So for fun, I did some quick calculations. I'm not a physicist, but recalling the relationship between kinetic energy, mass, and velocity...
K = 3.8 kilotons TNT = 1.59*10^13 J = (1/2)mv^2
m = 2K/v^2 = 1.41*10^5 kg
So the mass was about 141,000 kg. According to a random source, the average minivan is about 17m^3 in size, so that would make the density of the object 8.3*10^3 kg/m^3, roughly equal to that of iron. So if my math is correct, this thing was basically the equivalent of a solid piece of iron the size of a minivan.
"few tonnes of iron in orbit is worth a fortune"
no it isn't.
Yes, it is, if it stays in orbit.
"Dear Mr. <World_Leader>,
I have a large chunk of iron orbiting the planet, and it would be a real shame if it were to accidentally drop on your capitol city. How would you like to invest in a little insurance against that?"
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.