Aug 032018
 

On July 25, 2018, a meteor smacked into the upper atmosphere not far from the Thule Air Force Base in Greenland and exploded with the energy of a 2.1 kiloton nuke. This is not unusual. But the impact speed was kinda high… 24.4 km/sec. For comparative purposes, the “interstellar asteroid” Oumuamua was going about 26 km/sec. this means Earth got clocked by something From Beyond. Edit: note really *that* on high compared to other impactors. If you look at the chart here…

https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/

…this impact was substantially higher than those listed in the ten most recent impacts. But if you expand the chart to the most recent 100, it begins to look less extraordinary. Still faster than most, but there are a number of faster ones… on 2017-03-09, one hit at 36.5 km/sec.

 Posted by at 8:12 pm