Better Decisions Through Data.
As show in this map, small space asteroids hit the Earth more often than commonly thought. We’re continuing our recent asteroid theme. According to this map, small asteroids were documented hitting the earth 556 times in the twenty year from 1994 to 32013. Nasa notes that “almost all were harmless.” Ahhh, well, almost all, except for that Chelyabinsk event. (The study of these unlikely but potentially catastrophic “Black Swan” events, like the Carrington Event, is another topic we’ve discussed before (here).) Recall the Chelyabinsk event broke a lot of windows and caused a lot of other damage in rural Siberia (and made for some pretty spectacular video). Good thing Siberia is rural, because the Chelyabinsk event _only_ released 20-30 times more energy than the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. And it wasn’t detected before it entered Earth’s atmosphere. So maybe that early warning system needs some work if we want to continue feeling smug and so much superior to the dinosaurs. (Remember the video and our blog article on that (here)?) Siberia, Russia gets a lot of asteroids. Remember the Tunguska event of 1908? 1,000 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb. No early warning system back then, either.
Post and some comments below may be synced from our original Instagram version.
Instagram likes: 58
Awesome