I have promoted this article with Asteroid size danger from regular contributor Goat Guy.
There certainly have been a lot of detection events in the military surveillance satellite record, both public and secret. I’m not terribly surprised at the 1 in 15 years for “megaton class” impactors: ⅘ of the world is ocean, far from eyes that might catch a glimpse of such a bolide. Of the remaining ⅕, more than ¾ of it is essentially “beyond the horizon” of people who might be able to report it, especially if at the lower end of the explosive-energy release spectrum.
So… Let’s do a little simple math. The impact energy will be directly related to d³ (third power of diameter). Let’s say Chelyabinsk was 500 kT or better, 0.5 MT (not metric ton, but megaton):
---------------------------------------------- meter megaton megaton kilometer diameter kinetic E airburst crater ---------------------------------------------- 2 0.001 0.001 0 daily, around world 3.3 0.002 0.002 0 trivial 4 0.004 0.004 0 very small 5 0.008 0.008 0 small 6.5 0.017 0.017 0 notable 8 0.032 0.032 0 notable 10 0.063 0.063 0 scary, but safe 13 0.14 0.14 0 window breaker 16 0.26 0.26 0 20 0.5 0.5 0 Chelyabinsk 25 1.0 1.0 0 ---------------------------------------------- 33 2.2 1.5 0.7 town killer 40 4.0 2.0 0.9 suburb killer 50 7.8 2.8 1.3 city killer 65 17 4 1.8 Tunguska 80 32 6 2.2 100 63 8 2.8 metro region killer 125 122 11 4 State disruption 160 256 16 5 Country disruption 200 500 22 6 250 977 31 7 SubContinent disruption ---------------------------------------------- 330 2,246 47 10 Civilization threat 400 4,000 63 12 Civilization challenge 500 7,813 88 15 Civilization disruption 650 17,164 131 19 Extinction threat 800 32,000 179 24 Extinction challenge ---------------------------------------------- 1,000 62,500 250 30 Climate change 1,250 122,070 349 37 Climate oveturn 1,600 256,000 506 48 Regional extinction 2,000 500,000 707 59 ---------------------------------------------- 2,500 976,563 988 74 Extinction event 3,300 2,246,063 1,499 98 4,000 4,000,000 2,000 119 ---------------------------------------------- 5,000 7,812,500 2,795 149 Apocalyptic Extinction Event 6,500 17,164,063 4,143 193 Sterilization threat 8,000 32,000,000 5,657 238 10,000 62,500,000 7,906 298 Planetary sterilization
CLEARLY we don’t want to be anywhere near the bottom of the list. Too much bad shite happening down there. The above calculations are my own, based on scope-and-consequence models from around the Net. The assessments of “damage” are also my own. Goat’s scale.
Well there’s your Friday Fodder.
GoatGuy
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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