Asteroid Impacts Are More Common Than We Thought
Chelyabinsk Meteoroid Airburst Event Yields Crucial Data
“A team of NASA and international scientists for the first time have gathered a detailed understanding of the effects on Earth from a small asteroid impact. The unprecedented data obtained as the result of the airburst of a meteoroid over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15, has revolutionized scientists’ understanding of this natural phenomenon.”
New research shows events like Russian asteroid may happen more frequently
“Existing models predict events like the Chelyabinsk asteroid might hit every 120 or 150 years, but our data shows the frequency may be closer to every 30 or 40 years,” explains Brown, the Canada Research Chair in Meteor Science, who also serves as CPSX Director. “That’s a big surprise. When Chelyabinsk happened, I would have never expected to see an event big enough to cause damage on the ground. It’s totally outside the realm of what we thought likely in our lifetimes based on earlier statistics. Our statistics now suggest this type of event likely happens with more frequency.”
“… every 30 or 40 years …”
That level of occurrence will result in 2 to 4 asteroid impacts during the 20 century.
There was one in 1978 over the Indian Ocean that the nuclear warning satellites thought was a nuke test.
Now I think these asteroid experts are just taking a page out of the Global Warming game book! Inflate the figures! Make it look that we are doomed if we don’t make some changes soon, now. We must do something otherwise its ixnay in the armscray. And someone will profit handsomely from it!
ah, you’re just being a cynic (and why not ?) …
1) how does investigating one event tell you they’re more frequent than previously thought ? maybe they’re looking at the record ??
2) statistically 1 specific 100 year period could be short of anticipated 30 year events … they don’t happen every 30 years; you do expect about 3 every 100 years, but 2 or 4 events is not unreasonable.
I’m just fooling with people. For every dramatic event there is a subset of people that smell a conspiracy – just don’t believe its true or take it to some extreme.
The results in the journal Nature are good ones. The DoD has been monitoring Earth for nuclear blasts & missile launches since the 70s. That data included detection of meteors and is now extrapolated to reach the conclusions that were published.
It won’t cost much to eliminate the risk asteroid. The World is round, astronauts did land on the Moon, Climate Change (Warming) due to CO2 and hydrocarbon buildup is real and the Asteroid threat is greater than scientists first estimated.
Climate Change and Food production are much more challenging, costly and higher risk. The Green Revolution, machinery and synthetic fertilizers (Haber process, etc.), bought the world 50 or 75 yrs.
“Someone” will profit handsomely when one of these is prevented from hitting us (or when the effects of AGW are blunted). But if no one profits handsomely from the preparations for those events, preparation may never happen, and “someone” will not get their reward. Simple economics, but bridging generations makes it tough to justify…
Personally, I don’t care about the number of decimal places in the certainty, or lack of certainty, of future potentially devastating events. I would simply prefer it if the world were to err on the side of caution (by taking action) than simply get into a protracted pointless debate on the matter. In a situation like this, debate can be seen as nothing more than a way to avoid acting responsibly. When it’s a question of whose home a rock will land on, everybody on the planet faces exactly the same risk.