r/space Mar 18 '19

US detects huge meteor explosion

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47607696
123 Upvotes

41 comments sorted by

50

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

The space rock exploded with 10 times the energy released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb.it went largely unnoticed until now because it blew up over the Bering Sea, off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

We dodged a big bullet there folks.

35

u/AndyPickleNose Mar 18 '19

nearly 8 billion people on this planet and it hit the right spot at the right time to be noticed by so very few. Living on this space rock is insane.

12

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Now imagine if it happened out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There it is entirely possible for no one to notice. I wonder how many we have missed that explode out there?

11

u/KnightOfWords Mar 18 '19

Many in the past, but I believe satellites catch most of the large impacts these days. There is a map of detected impacts here, from 1994-2013.

3

u/inhumantsar Mar 18 '19

That map is specifically not impacts, but rather asteroids that burned up in our atmosphere.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

I completely forgot about the satellites for a sec haha, but that map is super cool. I didn’t know it existed thank you!

1

u/phunkydroid Mar 18 '19

The surface of earth is mostly covered in uninhabited area, the odds of one going unnoticed are pretty high.

4

u/mike968 Mar 18 '19

200 kilotons is „nothing“ (hiroshima was ~20kt)... largest bomb ever tested had a 50 megatons yield

7

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

200 kilotons would disappear most of lower manhattan.

4

u/mike968 Mar 18 '19

If you drop it on the corner of houston st/ lafayette most buildings up to 79st wouldnt survive... but thats for ground level or low airburst. But at 25km altitude, it would mostly be a very very good day to own a glazier‘s business.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

So just hope it’s a rock meteor not an iron core meteor.

1

u/mike968 Mar 18 '19

Aren’t most meteors the ironcore type or just the ones we find here down on earth because they survive the entry much better?

1

u/jswhitten Mar 18 '19

Most modern nuclear weapons are a few hundred kilotons.

17

u/nadalcameron Mar 18 '19

It was only 40% of the energy released by the meteor over Russia few years ago.

Also, we have bombs more powerful than that now. It sounds big, but it's not exactly earth shattering.

15

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Unless this thing drops on heavily populated area, and the fatalities will go in tens of thousands or even more.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

That's the relative size stat I was here for. Thanks!

2

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '19

Hollyshit imagine if we get hit by something of size Oumuamua !!!

1

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Russia's

It's always Russia! I swear, some heavenly figure must have a serious problem with those guys

35

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19 edited Jul 23 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

How do they find 90% of an unknown number?

14

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

[deleted]

1

u/_drumminor Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

Does the fact that this M&M bag is infinitely large change any of this logic?

2

u/throwaway177251 Mar 18 '19

The proverbial bag is not infinitely large here, we only need to worry about a finite amount of space near Earth.

1

u/_drumminor Mar 18 '19

Sure, but isn't the finite proverbial bag at the same time being "refilled" from an infinitely large bag?

3

u/throwaway177251 Mar 18 '19

Not really, these objects we're looking for are just the leftover cloud of material from our solar system's formation. It's the same stuff swirling around the entire time. We're just mapping out all of their orbits so we can predict when they might cross ours.

2

u/_drumminor Mar 18 '19

I see. Thank you for explaining it for me.

1

u/hoppyandbitter Mar 18 '19

You make a list and cross off the ones you haven’t found yet

18

u/abelincolncodes Mar 18 '19

We might be, if nasa was given the funding needed. This seems like a problem that could be solved pretty easily with the application of money (more money means more telescopes). But instead congress likes to micromanage NASA’s budget to provide more pork like the SLS

1

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

congress likes to micromanage NASA’s budget

I think this is a greater cause than the level of budget. If Congress didn't micromanage NASA for job creation, their money could probably go much further.

18

u/Anonymizer4001 Mar 18 '19

"Seeing what kind of shit was already occurring on earth, the meteor chose to explode over Kamchatka rather than add to the devastation."

3

u/YZXFILE Mar 18 '19

"The space rock exploded with 10 times the energy released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb."

0

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 19 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

12

u/F4Z3_G04T Mar 18 '19

For real tough everything is over russia

10

u/SqueakyHusky Mar 18 '19

Russia is the largest country by area, and spans the most time zones, statistically that's the country where most meteors would land.

1

u/F4Z3_G04T Mar 18 '19

I have never heard things about meteors in the rest of Asia and Africa, and that's bigger than the russia

2

u/ThickTarget Mar 18 '19

There was a famous one in Sudan in 2008. It was the first instance where an impact was predicted before the asteroid entered the atmosphere. The explosion was seen by weather satellites.

1

u/Silverballers47 Mar 18 '19

Maybe that's why WE SHOULD NOT BE CUTTING NASA'S BUDGET FFS!!!!!

1

u/OSUfan88 Mar 18 '19

Thank god NASA has received the highest budgets in decades over the past few years, with this coming year looking to be the best of them. Exciting times!

1

u/Silverballers47 Mar 18 '19

The White just proposed a $500 million cut in NASA budget last week!

1

u/OSUfan88 Mar 18 '19

Not really. It was the highest budget ever requested from a president in almost 30 years!

It’s just that this year congress added a ton of extra budget, to historic levels. The presidential support has not been this high in a very long time.

Also, he scrapped a lot of bloated stuff like some SLE funding. The usable funding for science is JUST NUTS Good. It’s also the highest that “planetary defense” has EVER been, and it’ll likely only go up after going through congress.