Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Near Miss This Morning

Earth Sky News reports an asteroid came pretty close to the Earth this morning. Close being about twice the distance as the moon. Not all that big and it's believed if it would have entered the atmosphere it likely only would have caused a sonic boom and burned up. Unless it happened over a populated area, in which case it might have been like the one that exploded over Russia last February causing damage and injury.

This happens fairly often:

These sorts of events – small bodies colliding with Earth’s atmosphere – are actually pretty common. In April 2014, evidence from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which operates a network of sensors that monitors Earth around the clock listening for the infrasound signature of nuclear detonations, reported 26 atom-bomb-scale asteroid impacts in Earth’s atmosphere since 2000. Nearly all of these objects went unnoticed, except by people who might have witnessed them as superbolides – extremely bright meteors – flashing across the sky. Of course, most entered over an ocean, and no one saw them.

I suppose that's good or bad news depending on how you look at things. 

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