All right kiddies, gather ‘round for a bedtime story. However, you might not want to go to bed right after this bedtime story; you might have bad dreams.
Once upon a time, in east central Asia, our story begins. It is early on a fine June morning in 1908. No one in this sparsely populated area knows they have an appointment. They are going about their daily business as people in the area have done for centuries, taking care of the business of living. A little after seven o’clock their visitor arrives from space. It slams into the atmosphere at such a high velocity its structure cannot handle the stresses and it explodes several miles above the surface of the Tunguska region. The explosive yield of this impactor boggles the mind, with estimates ranging from 10 to 30 megatons. The Richter scale has not been developed at this time, but the seismic shock is equivalent to a 5.0 quake. Trees are flattened in an area of over 2000 square kilometers. It is a fairly big boom.
What was this visitor? It most likely was a stony asteroid about 50 meters in diameter.
Why should we give a crap about it? That is an excellent question; I am glad I asked it. After all, it happened in the middle of no where, and nobody was hurt, and it was a century ago. Those objections are all true. However, these impactors are not running on a schedule like the local bus line; they are completely at random. We are as likely to have an unruly visitor tomorrow as a century from now. There is no telling where the next Tunguska-like event will happen. It might not be in a swampy wasteland. It might not be in an unpopulated area. What would be the bottom line of a 10 megaton asteroidal detonation over New York City, or Sacramento, or Copenhagen, or Jerusalem, or Mecca, or Sydney? The likelihood of an impactor hitting any population center (or any individual, for that matter) is vanishingly small, but the consequences would be horrendous.
The end? Not hardly.
Next time I want to talk to you about a hole in the ground named Barringer.
1 comment:
The color scheme is much improved, oh great one. Thank you.
The air burst you describe was a profound event, and one almost anywhere over the eastern US seaboard would take out quite a few people and rodents. If you could pick the target, where would it be?
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