A meteor caused a massive explosion over Earth last year, but nobody noticed until now. It is the second-largest recorded impact in the past century, after the meteor that exploded over the Russian region of Chelyabinsk in 2013.
The giant fireball hit at 2350 GMT on 18 December over the Bering Sea, a part of the Pacific Ocean between Russia and Alaska.
Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, spotted the meteor in measurements picked up by at least 16 monitoring stations globally.
The meteor was 10 metres in diameter, had a mass of 1400 tonnes and impacted with an energy of 173 kilotons of TNT, he wrote on Twitter. The impact energy was about 10 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
The meteor exploded at altitude above Earth’s surface, says Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen’s University Belfast, UK. “It would have been quite spectacular,” he says.
The explosion was detected by infrasound stations around the world, which pick up low-frequency acoustic waves inaudible to humans. These stations were initially set up during the cold war to detect nuclear explosions.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Alfred on Tuesday March 19 2019, @01:23PM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 19 2019, @01:49PM (3 children)
People don't know this, Russia is HUGE. Really really big. Bigger than all the other countries. So big that a huge Meteor can fall on it and nobody notices for a long time. Which is why it's known as the Russian Empire. U.S.A., we're not an empire. We send our great, and very brave soldiers. We send "democracy" -- our Companies -- to so many places. I said to John Bolton, talk to Exxon Mobil. Talk to Conoco. Because Venezuela is failing badly, Iran is failing badly. #WeAreGuaido [twitter.com] #40YearsOfFailure [twitter.com] And we need our companies to be ready to go in there and restore "democracy." And FREEDOM, so important.
By the way, I hear that a huge Meteor killed those magnificent Dinosaurs. And I wonder, what if that one fell on Russia, would anybody notice right away? Or would it take a super long time?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @02:07PM (2 children)
"By the way, I hear that a huge Meteor killed those magnificent Dinosaurs. And I wonder, what if that one fell on Russia, would anybody notice right away? Or would it take a super long time?"
The meteor theorized to have killed the non-avian dinosaurs didn't kill them through the direct impact (at least those not near ground-zero), but rather it cause massive climate change worldwide. The extinctions took a long time and happened globally. I think we would notice an impact like that, no matter where it landed.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday March 19 2019, @03:16PM (1 child)
I recently read an article that the location of the impact made a huge difference in the chances for extinction, but I can't find it. The article said that, had the impact happened on almost any other place on Earth, the dinosaurs could have survived.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @05:22PM
I read something by a guy who said he had been watching them hit the sun with a laser to encourage a flare. He said they are currently practicing the timing of their ionospheric heater and anyone could spot it if they pay attention to the sun.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @01:58PM (1 child)
They testingg meteor weapoms
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 19 2019, @04:29PM
Dey has meteors ob mass destruction! INVADE!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @03:07PM (1 child)
If an event happens and no one reports it that does not mean it didn't happen.
Also, an event can be reported to have happened which did not happen, and that makes it an event and people will behave as if it did happen from that time onwards.
Ok, there was an explosion at some altitude above the planet's surface but how do we know it was not man-made? Maybe the israeli khazars are busy destroying the atmosphere in preparation for the coming of Methusaleh (sp?).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 19 2019, @05:37PM
> Maybe the israeli khazars are busy destroying the atmosphere in preparation for the coming of Methusaleh (sp?).
The Bering Sea would be near-antipodal from the previous time [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @03:08PM
I think the correct statement is "our click bait website revenue generation machine lacked this headline due to our keeping up with the Kardashians--until now"
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday March 19 2019, @03:53PM (4 children)
The great David Spader as Ultron:
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday March 19 2019, @04:35PM (3 children)
We know where pretty much all the big ones in the solar system are.
Maybe a major city could be hit by an undetected larger-than-Chelyabinsk asteroid that impacts close to the ground instead of airbursting. Instead of hundreds of injuries, you could see up to hundreds of thousands dead. But it's much more likely that such an asteroid would hit an unpopulated area or the ocean.
Meanwhile, Gaia [wikipedia.org] and LSST [wikipedia.org] are going to increase the number of known asteroids. Other surveys will find more and refine their orbits. Eventually we should reach a point where all of the ones capable of hitting the ground are accounted for.
The interstellar asteroids could be a bigger problem. Orders of magnitude harder to detect, basically impossible to stop even if they are detected, potentially larger than the solar system asteroids likely to hit us, and they have a higher relative velocity, increasing their kinetic energy.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday March 19 2019, @05:12PM
No, we don't know where all the "large" asteroids are. We often know where we expect them to be, but orbits shift unpredictably due to the n-body problem. *PART* of that results in rapid and drastic changes.
Another problem is the definition of "large". Something large enough to cause immense damage is still small on the astronomical scale. And the result can depend very sensitively on just where the impact is.
Another problem is visitors from the Oort cloud, which we pretty much are entirely ignorant of.
Telescopes only cover a very small portion of the sky at any particular time. *VERY* small. Generally the more powerful the telescope is, the less coverage it provides. Being able to see smaller things doesn't directly translate into more complete coverage, and usually means the reverse. Wide field telescopes are always(?) less powerful in resolution than narrow field telescopes of equivalent size.
One example of this is the meteor covered in this story, which was not detected until after it had collided with the Earth. There have been several other examples. That these have all been rather small is because almost all asteroids are rather small. But one of these came up under the moon, and we were told that with it's orbit it couldn't have been seen before collision even if people had been looking in the right place. This was only partially the result of its size, but the orbit dominated during the period since it rounded the sun.
That said, the chances are pretty low for a major impact. Unfortunately, even a minor impact has the potential of setting off a major war, if it looks like a sneak attack. Moscow and Washington are pretty small targets, but during a period of high tension...
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Tuesday March 19 2019, @05:39PM (1 child)
One word for you:
Oumuamua
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 19 2019, @05:51PM
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday March 19 2019, @07:29PM (2 children)
Funny that we're being told that this was a "meteor". Look, I'm not saying it was aliens, but...
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @08:22PM
Trump was draining them swamps.
(Score: 2) by Farmer Tim on Wednesday March 20 2019, @06:59AM
Came for the news, stayed for the soap opera.