Nov 172013
 

Not video of the airburst, but an actual impact. In this case, on the frozen surface of a lake. It’s not the best footage (a distant security camera), but has there ever been footage showing an actual landing of a meteorite before?

 

And because why not, here are ten minutes from the old documentary “Miracle Planet.” It depicts the effects of an impact of a five HUNDRED kilometer asteroid with present day Earth. The Chelyabinsk explosion has a lot of people rethinking the need for planetary defense systems against asteroid and comet impacts… but an impact like *this* would be unstoppable and unsurvivable. The only way to escape doom would be to leave Earth well before impact. And you’d have to go further than Earth orbit; geosynchronous would probably not be far enough away to avoid a month-long incessant shotgun blast of bits of Earth.

Fortunately, while this sort of impact has happened on Earth several times, these impact were all in the early formational period, four billion or so years ago. Earth is unlikely to have an impact like this again before the sun swallows the burnt cinder of the Earth several billion years hence.

 

 Posted by at 1:13 pm