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Meteor Blast Over Bering Sea Was 10 Times Size of Hiroshima (theguardian.com)
A meteor explosion over the Bering Sea late last year unleashed 10 times as much energy as the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, scientists have revealed. From a report: The fireball tore across the sky off Russia's Kamchatka peninsula on 18 December and released energy equivalent to 173 kilotons of TNT. It was the largest air blast since another meteor hurtled into the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, in Russia's south-west, six years ago, and the second largest in the past 30 years. Unlike the Chelyabinsk meteor, which was captured on CCTV, mobile phones and car dashboard cameras, the December arrival from outer space went largely unnoticed at the time because it exploded in such a remote location. Nasa received information about the blast from the US air force after military satellites detected visible and infrared light from the fireball in December.
Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at Nasa, told BBC News that blasts of this size were expected only two or three times a century. The space agency's analysis shows that the meteor, probably a few metres wide, barrelled into Earth's atmosphere at 72,000mph and exploded at an altitude of 16 miles. The blast released about 40% of the energy of the meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, according to Kelly Fast, Nasa's near-Earth objects observations programme manager, who spoke at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science conference near Houston.
Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at Nasa, told BBC News that blasts of this size were expected only two or three times a century. The space agency's analysis shows that the meteor, probably a few metres wide, barrelled into Earth's atmosphere at 72,000mph and exploded at an altitude of 16 miles. The blast released about 40% of the energy of the meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, according to Kelly Fast, Nasa's near-Earth objects observations programme manager, who spoke at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science conference near Houston.
Between Tunguska, Chelyabinsk, and now this, it's obvious to me that space hates Russia.
Planetary Defense Officer. That'd be sweet on a business card.
Where's all the click-bait on what would it be like if this happened over a major population center?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This is a record for slow news. What did they do, send the message by Inuit canoe?
that the Goa'uld seem to targeting Russia?
This was obviously a Gould mothership being destroyed after SG1 Saves The World Yet Again.
Go for Daesh!
They're actually fairly common, with about 20-40 air bursts occurring each year. They're pretty evenly distributed. Russia just seems to get a disproportionate number because it has the most land area of any country by almost a factor of 2. It's also got a large population spread throughout that very large land area. The country covers pretty much the same latitude as Canada (second-largest country), but Canada is mostly deserted at higher latitutdes. So that increases the chances of a meteor being seen/recorded over Russia.
It's also worth noting that the ancient Egyptians also witnessed large meteor events and used the material to create jewelry for royalty and ceremonial weapons.
The old Soviet Union had a system known as " Dead Hand " whereupon it would auto-launch a retaliatory strike in the event it detected what it considered to be a nuclear attack on Soviet targets.
Considering the cosmos treats Russia as a Meteor Magnet, I wonder how this system would interpret an impact from a larger celestial body.
( Assuming it's online )
Be about right that Russia would get smacked with a building sized meteor only to trigger said system and nuke half the planet :|
The meteoric friction and vapor explosion that is adding to global warming should be blamed on humans swimming in de Nile.
Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at Nasa, told BBC News that blasts of this size were expected only two or three times a century.
Yet the last one was only six months ago!
What say you meteor-change deniers now??
Obviously western spy aggression.
Capitalist nukes disguised as meteors, to attack the glorious empire!
Ibat', comrade,
Iosif Vissarionovic Pizdec, ... ;-)
Research Batailllion of Kurwansk.
But with climate change we can expect these much more often.
True. We can even calculate the expected increase.
The average temp of the earth's atmosphere is 14C or 287 K. So a 2 degree increase will expand the atmosphere by a factor of 2/287 or 0.7%. Since the atmosphere is roughy 100km deep, this is an extra 700 meters.
The mean radius of the earth is 6371 km, or 6471 including the atm, for a cross sectional area of 1.315e8 square km. With the extra 700 m, this will increase by 9060 sq km.
So with global warming we should expect a 0.02% increase in meteor impacts.
Don't get to excited. Total energy is not that relevant, what counts is power that is the time interval the energy is released. An atomic explosion is orders of magnitude quicker that a meteor air burst. Wikipedia tells me that the very scary kiloton of TNT unit is about 4 X 10^9 joules or about a megawatt-hour. In more familiar units, that is about a million electric ovens baking cakes for an hour or even a million 150 horsepower cars running for a hour.
Planetary Defense Officer! Tell me this isn't the coolest job title in all of human history! Imagine chatting at a bar. "What do you do for a living? Neurosurgeon? Rocket Scientist?" and you reply "No baby...Planetary Defense Officer. Y'know this Earth thing? Yeah, I defend that."
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Are you taking into account all the meteors that would have flown by a flat earth if they encountered it edge-on?
Have gnu, will travel.
> In theory, it should be very easy to distinguish a meteor impact from a nuke.
Theory is one thing, politics and the self-chosen nation are another....
In 1979 the so-called Vela Incident took place: the american "partial nuclear test ban" monitoring Vela satellite detected a 3kT neutron bomb explosion near a tiny island half way between then-apartheid South Africa and Antarctica. It wasn't the penguins, but the zionist and the apartheid regimes, which conducted a joint test. The apartheid offered the island, maritime logistics and 550 tons of uranium ore, while the zionists contributed the neutron bomb and they gave six simplictic "gun-type" (Hiroshima-like) A-bombs as a gift to the apartheid regime, nominally to keep cuban troops in Angola at bay.
US foreign politics quickly realized that they can't disclose all that, since jews rule America. Suddenly the satellite was declared operating at a reduced capability due to faulty components and the official explanation became an undersea quake coinciding with a bolide impact and unusually powerful whale songs. The entire satellite staff resigned in protest over that dog comedy. A few weeks later sheep started to exhibit thyroid symptoms in New Zealand and isotope analysis revealed an atomic bomb explosion took place upwind. The USA paid NZ a lot to keep that affair low-profile. Soviets didn't protest much since their country was also run by the chosens (the actual leader in power, head of KGB Yuri Andropov was a jew).
Are you taking into account all the meteors that would have flown by a flat earth if they encountered it edge-on?
The reptile overlords would never send edge on meteors, since they can't be seen at the horizon and so would serve no purpose in fooling the populace.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I tell you, it was the Bugs!
It will be Buenos Aires next!
Would you like to know more?
But.... nothing in Australia?
Australia is closer - and down wind - than New Zealand.
While Israel/South Africa most likely did fire off a nuke, I doubt that New Zealand would have been the ONLY place that had health issues with animals/humans showing signs of radiation linked concerns.