A Map of Every Nuke-Scale Asteroid Strike From the Last Decade

Though dinosaur-killing impacts are rare, large asteroids routinely hit the Earth. In the visualization above, you can see the location of 26 space rocks that slammed into our planet between 2000 and 2013, each releasing energy equivalent to that of some of our most powerful nuclear weapons.

The video comes from the B612 Foundation, an organization that wants to build and launch a telescope that would spot civilization-ending asteroids to give humans a heads up in trying to deflect them. To figure out where asteroids were hitting our planet, B612 used data from a worldwide network of instruments that detect infrasound, low-frequency sound waves traveling through the atmosphere. Such measurements have been used since the 1950s to detect nuclear bomb explosions and can also pick up the tremendous burst of a bolide tearing through our atmosphere.

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Russian Meteorite: Meteor caught on tape 2014

Aussie Meteorite Caught on Channel 10

:P

How are near-Earth asteroids presently monitored?

Divine Angel said:

How are near-Earth asteroids presently monitored?

They are detected by a range of instruments

1 Telescopes
2 Ground based Nuclear Monitoring Systems
3 Satellites
4 Radios
5 Radar

Russia Meteor Blast Was Largest Detected by Nuclear Monitoring System
Chelyabinsk Meteor
Radio Meteor Listening
Radio Meteor Detection
How do we detect incoming meteorites?

I had no idea they were so common (although they do say most of the recorded impacts exploded in the atmosphere, so presumably would have no harmful effect on the ground).

Are there any recorded historical events that caused significant damage to humans, due to asteroid impact?

There’s a theory that the sun is actually part of a binary system and has an evil brown dwarf that hasn’t been seen yet.

On a regular basis in the tens if millions of years the twin returns knocking the Ort cloud like skittles and causes debris to rain down on earth

Google

Nemesis hypothetical star

wookiemeister said:

There’s a theory that the sun is actually part of a binary system and has an evil brown dwarf that hasn’t been seen yet.

On a regular basis in the tens if millions of years the twin returns knocking the Ort cloud like skittles and causes debris to rain down on earth

I was thinking more in the time scale of 1000’s of years, rather than millions.

When andromeda slams into our galaxy I bet you’ll have all kinds of crap falling into the solar system.

wookiemeister said:

When andromeda slams into our galaxy I bet you’ll have all kinds of crap falling into the solar system.

About 4 billion years away apparently.

Who’s this Dr Brian May anyway? Looks a bit queer.

Oh mama Mia let me go

Wrt Rev’s Q, I think it would be reasonable to say that the Chelyabinsk meteor last year did significant damage to humans, given that about 1500 people had to receive medical treatment, and many thousands of building’s were damaged.

dv said:

Wrt Rev’s Q, I think it would be reasonable to say that the Chelyabinsk meteor last year did significant damage to humans, given that about 1500 people had to receive medical treatment, and many thousands of building’s were damaged.

OK, I hadn’t registered that, but I was thinking really of less recent times, and casualties comparable to a large earthquake or tsunami (or worse).

In the United States, NASA has a congressional mandate to catalogue all NEOs that are at least 1 kilometer wide, as the impact of such an object would be catastrophic. As of February 2014, there have been 867 near-Earth asteroids larger than 1 km discovered, of which 154 are potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). It was estimated in 2006 that 20% of the mandated objects have not yet been found. As a result of NEOWISE in 2011, it is estimated that 93% of the NEAs larger than 1 km have been found and that only about 70 remain to be discovered.
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NEOWISE data estimates that there are 4,700 ± 1,500 potentially hazardous asteroids with a diameter greater than 100 meters. As of 2012, an estimated 20 to 30 percent of these objects have been found. Asteroids larger than 35 meters across can pose a threat to a town or city.

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…this formula implies that the expected value of the time from now until the next impact greater than 1 megatonne is 33 years, and that when it occurs, there is a 50% chance that it will be above 2.4 megatonnes.

wiki

It’d be like a bomb going off.

We just need Chuck Norris to breathe in the general direction of the asteroid and we’re all good.

I suppose this thread could do with a link to the Earth Impact Effects Program from Imperial College, London and Purdue University, Indiana.

Welcome to the Earth Impact Effects Program: an easy-to-use, interactive web site for estimating the regional environmental consequences of an impact on Earth. This program will estimate the ejecta distribution, ground shaking, atmospheric blast wave, and thermal effects of an impact as well as the size of the crater produced.

Please enter values in the boxes below to describe your impact event of choice and your distance away. Then click “Calculate Effects” to learn about the environmental consequences.

Earth’s Oldest and Biggest Crater Yields New Secrets

In the abraded heart of South Africa’s Vredefort impact crater lie striking green-black “impact” melt rocks that were thought to have been lost to time

Geologists say they’ve discovered rocks long thought vanished, the youngest remains of the oldest and biggest impact crater on Earth.

In the abraded heart of South Africa’s Vredefort impact crater lurk striking green-black rocks, some of the only remnants of a magma sea that once filled the gaping crater, according to a study to be published this May in the journal Geology. Until now, geologists thought nearly all of these “impact melt” rocks were lost to time. Some 6 miles (10 kilometers) of Vredefort crater has worn away since it was whacked open 2.02 billion years ago.

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Humongous fireball lights up daytime skies over New York, Canada

A brilliant fireball surprised some skywatchers Sunday (May 4) when it streaked across the daytime sky over Toronto in a celestial fireworks display caught on camera by lucky motorists.

A well-placed dashboard video camera captured the light of the bright meteor, which could be seen from parts of Canada and New York on May 4. The daytime fireball video shows a clear view from a parked car with people chatting in the background. The meteor comes streaking down from the top of the sky at about the 22-second mark, with a clear outburst of light occurring at about 24 seconds.

“There was a fireball that came down and burned up,” one of the people recorded by David Narciso’s dashcam said after the fireball streaked through the daylight sky. “See that line of puff? There was, like, something on fire and then it just stopped.”

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Asteroid collided with another before exploding above Russia with 30 times force of atomic bomb: scientists

An asteroid that exploded last year over Chelyabinsk, Russia, leaving more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris, collided with another asteroid before hitting Earth, new research shows.

Analysis of a mineral called jadeite that was embedded in fragments recovered after the explosion shows the asteroid’s parent body struck a larger asteroid at a relative speed of 4,800 kilometres per hour.

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IWUOT