re: #120 Anymouse 🌹🏡😷

NASA Analysis: Earth Is Safe From Asteroid Apophis for 100-Plus Years (NASA)

No Sweet Meteor of Death in our lifetimes.

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I wouldn’t necessarily say that; after all, the Chelyabinsk meteor pretty much came out of nowhere; it went undetected because its radiant was close to the Sun.

Damn good thing that explosion happened at about 30 km up, too - the blast yield on that bad boy was about 400 to 500 kilotons. It’s believed that the Tunguska bolide exploded at about five to ten km up in the atmosphere*; if the Chelyabinsk meteor had blown up at that (relatively) low altitude, the damage would have been infinitely worse. Hell, the Russians might have thought, at first, they were under nuclear attack.

* The estimated blast yield of the Tunguska event varies - it’s reckoned to be anywhere from three to thirty megatons, more than enough to destroy a metropolitan area in any event.