Meteor passing earth tonight

[retep 68]

The Mayans have just took their socks off and found they've got an extra toe.

[foxy lady 10]

I'm off to light up a few Chinese lanterns and scare the bejesus out of folks.

[cohensmum 10]

I'm off to light up a few Chinese lanterns and scare the bejesus out of folks.

 

Almost wet myself at this

[quisquose 10]

I really must watch Night Of The Comet again soon.

 

There's a couple of reasons why I always preferred the vampires in a comet film Lifeforce. Can't quite remember what they were though ...

[SUPERDREAM 10]

Wait for it..........wait for it.

Its coming, and will probably go as thus......

 

I was cycling down Penistone Rd, at a steady 18mph, when suddenly a huge asteroid landed straight in front of me WITH NO LIGHTS ON !!!!. I was so startled by this invasion on my hallowed cycle route that I swerved to miss it, causing me to fall off and graze my elbow. The fear and distress I experienced was so great that I actually lost control of my anal nerve, and began to pass wind perfusely. This massive escape of non toxic gas caused my pink lycra suit to swell and begin to expand, and before I could say "Bradly Wiggins", I began to float upwards and began drifting towards the highway. Just as I approached the road, Superdream was driving his big silly lorry past me, and beeped his horn to startle me even more. At that point the gases had began to deplete, and I gently floated to the ground, managing to land on my feet. I turned and glared at Superdream, and tutted and huffed, then made my way back to my claude-butler, in a jaunty fashion, of course.

Had it not been for the good grace of the unlit asteroid landing in front of me, I wouldnt have had the chance to glare and tut at Superdream in his big silly lorry, even though he was selfishly delivering milk to Tesco at the time.

It just goes to show that even when an asteroid hits earth in this manner, cycles are much more important on the roads than anyone else, especially big silly lorries making silly deliveries to supermarkets.

Signed;

A Burke, Cyclist.

[Rupert_Baehr 10]

What've you been taking, Lance?

[Karis 11]

15 metres though..wouldn't that do some big damaged to us all?

 

Absolutely none. It'll burn up to nothing but specs of dust.

 

Unless, it was made of diamond, and even then it'd probably just splash into the ocean harmlessly.

 

Edit: It does depend on the entry vector and a bunch of factors, but obviously, a 15m asteroid could quite easily cause serious damage to a house. Or a cow.

 

Probably a cow...

Edited February 7, 2013 by Karis

[Rupert_Baehr 10]

Absolutely none. It'll burn up to nothing but specs of dust.

 

Unless, it was made of diamond, and even then it'd probably just splash into the ocean harmlessly.

 

 

Err... Diamonds are made of carbon.

 

I think you'll find carbon burns quite readily.

[buddysbuddy 12]

yes and its gonna hit us and is gonna infect us with mutant alien zombie virus that will turn us all into zombies

 

I must have missed the one that landed on westminster then!

[Karis 11]

Err... Diamonds are made of carbon.

 

I think you'll find carbon burns quite readily.

 

/pedant alert!

 

It was a joke! Sheesh! I just liked the idea of a huge diamond falling to earth!

[Vague_Boy 10]

15 metres though..wouldn't that do some big damaged to us all?

 

Prolly not.

 

Smaller asteroids are much more difficult to detect. The cutoff size of what could cause major damage to Earth, such as a tsunami or an airburst, is difficult to state because it depends upon what the asteroid is made of, e.g., a metal asteroid vs. a soft one. Some sources put it at about 150 meters. A 10 meter asteroid can produce an explosion with approximately the same power as the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima, but that would occur very high in the atmosphere where it would be harmless.

LINK

 

The same power as a nuke but no radiation or EMP.

[Anna Glypta 10]

Absolutely none. It'll burn up to nothing but specs of dust.

 

Unless, it was made of diamond, and even then it'd probably just splash into the ocean harmlessly.

 

Edit: It does depend on the entry vector and a bunch of factors, but obviously, a 15m asteroid could quite easily cause serious damage to a house. Or a cow.

 

Probably a cow...

or

 

http://en.ria.ru/science/20130208/179298939/Tunguska-Size-Asteroid-to-Make-Closest-Fly-by-in-History.html

 

MOSCOW, February 8 (RIA Novosti) - An asteroid similar in size to the one which exploded over Tunguska in Siberia in 1908, will pass Earth on February 15 by the smallest-ever recorded margin, but poses no threat of colliding with the planet, America’s space agency NASA reported.

 

“The asteroid will pass by our planet at a remarkably close distance, but the asteroid’s path is understood well enough that there is no chance of a collision with the Earth,” NASA said on its website.

 

The asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, will come no closer than 17,150 miles (27,650 kilometers) to Earth, according to NASA. It was detected in February 2012 when it was about 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) away.

 

The asteroid is approximately 150 feet (45 meters) in diameter and has an estimated mass is about 130,000 metric tons.

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2007/11/071107-russia-crater.html

 

Almost a century after a mysterious explosion in Russia flattened a huge swath of Siberian forest, scientists have found what they believe is a crater made by the cosmic object that made the blast.

 

The crater was discovered under a lake near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in western Siberia, where the cataclysm, known as the Tunguska event, took place.

 

On June 30, 1908, a ball of fire exploded about 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the ground in the sparsely populated region, scientists say. The blast released 15 megatons of energy—about a thousand times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima—and flattened 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest.

Edited February 8, 2013 by Anna Glypta