A decade on from the Chelyabinsk meteor, and our planet has come a long way in detecting the threat of interstellar objects potentially hurtling into the atmosphere. But has the risk been completely eliminated - and exactly how prepared are we for another dramatic impact?
Chelyabinsk fireball recorded by a dashcam from Kamensk-Uralsky, north of the city of Chelyabinsk
It wasn't quite the day the Earth stood still, but those who witnessed a fiery asteroid briefly outshine the sun as it soared towards the Russian city of Chelyabinsk will almost certainly never forget it.
Comparable to the size of a house and travelling at a scintillating 11 miles per second, what was quickly dubbed
the Chelyabinsk meteor arrived unannounced in a manner reminiscent of a science-fiction disaster film. It was an unnerving spectacle.
Dashcam footage from the morning of 15 February 2013, in the central Russian city close to the Ural Mountains, shows the small asteroid entering the Earth's atmosphere before it exploded with 30 times more force than the US atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in the Second World War.
Windows shattered, buildings were damaged, and hundreds of people were injured - but Chelyabinsk got lucky.
"Had it been directly over the city, the damage would have been worse," warns NASA's planetary defence officer Lindley Johnson. "It was definitely a wake-up call."
Comment: And don't forget what the Chelyabinsk meteor events
sounded like...
If you ever see a long-duration fireball streak through the sky, and you suspect it's 'close' to your location, stay away from windows for a few minutes!
The shockwave generated by the above atmospheric explosion would have knocked any nearby aircraft to the ground. Fortunately, none were in the vicinity at the time, but one wonders about other 'unexplained' airplane crashes in recent years: e.g.,
What are they hiding? Flight 447 and Tunguska Type Events
To answer the question asked in the above headline, the risk posed by increased cometary debris isn't just a matter of 'potentially catastrophic strikes'- i.e., single asteroids which make impact and cause devastation over a discrete geographic area - but also multiple other, planet-wide, risk factors such as the atmosphere becoming loaded with comet dust (aka 'meteor smoke') from all these meteor fireball events in recent years, and what effect this is having on the climate...
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Comment: And don't forget what the Chelyabinsk meteor events sounded like...
If you ever see a long-duration fireball streak through the sky, and you suspect it's 'close' to your location, stay away from windows for a few minutes!
The shockwave generated by the above atmospheric explosion would have knocked any nearby aircraft to the ground. Fortunately, none were in the vicinity at the time, but one wonders about other 'unexplained' airplane crashes in recent years: e.g., What are they hiding? Flight 447 and Tunguska Type Events
To answer the question asked in the above headline, the risk posed by increased cometary debris isn't just a matter of 'potentially catastrophic strikes'- i.e., single asteroids which make impact and cause devastation over a discrete geographic area - but also multiple other, planet-wide, risk factors such as the atmosphere becoming loaded with comet dust (aka 'meteor smoke') from all these meteor fireball events in recent years, and what effect this is having on the climate...