OF THE
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The layout of the impact area suggests that the body fell at a shallow angle, and was moving at typical meteorite entry speeds of 40,000 to 60,000 km/h. Its total mass was more than 3,500 tonnes. The shallow angle presented the body with more air resistance than it would have encountered at a steeper angle, and it broke up in the air into at least four pieces before impact. The biggest piece struck with an explosion roughly equivalent to the atom bomb that levelled Hiroshima.And recent dating suggest that it wasn't that long ago either...relatively:
Dating the impact event[edit]Fission-track analysis of glass fragments by Storzer (1965) suggested the Wabar impact took place thousands of years ago, but delicate glass filigree, and the fact that the craters have been filled-in considerably since Philby's 1932 visit, suggests their origin is much more recent. Thermoluminescence dating by Prescott et al. (2004)[9] suggest the impact site is less than 250 years old. This is consistent with Arab reports of a fireball passing over Riyadh, variously reported as occurring in 1863 or 1891 and heading southeast, reported in Philby's book "Empty Quarter" (1933).So, again I take issue with the title of the " five biggest meteor crashes of all time ". These two events that I mentioned occurred to me just from memory and I would be surprised if there are not many more events like that which would also push some of the top 5 events down the ladder. It appears to be sloppily researched or perhaps it was to calm people down to think that nothing really major is going to hit anytime soon. And perhaps they are right, though the dramatic increase over the last few years casts doubt on such optimism.
Philby had heard of Bedouin legends of an area called Al Hadida ("place of iron" in Arabic) with ruins of ancient habitations, and also an area where a piece of iron the size of a camel had been found, and so organized an expedition to visit the site. After a month's journey through wastes so harsh that even some of the camels died, on 2 February 1932 Philby arrived at a patch of ground about a half a square kilometre in size, littered with chunks of white sandstone, black glass, and chunks of iron meteorite.
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