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Large-ish Meteor Hits Earth... But No One Notices (discovery.com)

Posted by yaelk on from the we-lived-to-tell-the-tale dept.

According to data released by the Fireball and Bolide Reports page of NASA's Near Earth Object Program, a large meteor exploded far off the coast of Brazil on February 6, 2016. The meteor was the largest atmospheric impact recorded since the famous Chelyabinsk bolide that exploded over Russia in 2013. Although the Feb 6 meteor didn't cause any structural damage, the meteor unleashed an energy equivalent of 13,000 tons of TNT exploding instantaneously.

3 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:60% of the earth's surface is water... by rahvin112 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The meteor would need to be at least the size of a fighter jet to be trackable. Beyond a certain size it won't even register on the radar because if radar tracked everything down to the size of small finch it would be overwhelmed by positive signals. A large meteor would almost certainly hit the tracking radar but the objects are moving so fast that by the time they notified anyone it would be over. But most meteors are of the size that they won't even register. The main point of my post is that most meteors don't hit near populated areas, as a percentage of the earth surface the entire USA doesn't even register beyond a single digit percentage making a rare event even rarer.

  2. Re:60% of the earth's surface is water... by afidel · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to this article 2.7% of the land area is urban, that means ~1% of the total earths surface is urban land. If strikes are completely random then there should be a 1% chance that any given hit is in an urban area. Now I don't believe hits are completely random since the solar system is planer so areas nearer the equator probably have a higher percentage chance, but that may be balanced by more cities being near the equator (there are almost no large cities between 60 degrees north and 90 degrees and in the southern hemisphere it's even more striking with no large cities between 45 degrees south and 90 degrees)

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  3. Nobody was looking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Since the Spanish Meteor Network started to work full steam, each month or so there have been reports in the news of large fireballs brigtening the night sky over the Iberian peninsula. And every few years about really big superbolide ones.

    Even when every station is able to detect them only up to 500km away at best. the network reports 500 bolides every year, the lastest one this same week

    The sky is falling, but nobody is looking.