Things that go boom.

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.

Introducing The Experiment

Welcome to Doug’s Experiment; it is, you know, very experimental (for me, at least).  I am your host, the Generalissimo.  Welcome to the open house celebration.  Help yourself to some cheese and bread.  I have some wine and soft drinks on ice.  Oh, and I will be baking a couple of pizzas a little later, so don’t go away; my kids tell me my pizza is really great.  

Oops, I got off track.  You will find I do that from time to time.  Just throw something at me to get my attention.  There is no telling what (precisely) will go into this experiment, just as there is no way to predict what will come out of it.  However, I can make some general predictions about what you will find here.  (Pardon me a moment while I boot up my crystal ball.  Since it uses Internet Exploder, you know it is slow and prone to failure in various spectacular fashions.)

• There may be some humor.  Yes, I do have a sense of humor...or something I use in place of a sense of humor.  Hopefully you will be amused now and then.

• There will certainly be some foolishness.  Even those that strive to avoid looking like fools can not avoid it.  I, on the other hand, actively seek to look like a fool. (Like I have a choice.)

• I hope to occasionally strain your brain.  Maybe I can get your train of thought switched to a different track; if I succeed, I will be ecstatic.

• I will assuredly try to broach topics that will make you uncomfortable.  There are things that go bump in the night (and the day) that are much scarier than anything that we might imagine.

• ?

Well, my crystal ball appears to have crashed.  I will definitely have to see if I can put a Linux OS on it instead of the M$ OS that came with it.  We will just have to wait and see as this blog develops.

If you like what you see, tell me and tell others.  If you do not like what you see, tell me and tell others.