Just in case you needed something else to worry about:
Sandia National Labs has announced that a new supercomputer analysis of the Tunguska event suggests that earlier analyses were wrong: it would seem that the asteroid that hit Siberia in 1908 was a hell of a lot smaller than anyone thought.
The bad news, of course, is that little asteroids are more common than big asteroids. Harder to spot, and if the Sandia analysis is correct, more likely to hit Earth than anyone expected. So you have lots of little bullets doing more damage.
Truth be told, it's not really worth worrying about--it's not like there's a damn thing you can do about it, and you have to reckon that even a Tunguska Events-sized object is more likely to airburst over the ocean or some bit of remote countryside than over your hometown. Your hometown is a pretty insignificant target, after all. Still, it's interesting, and I didn't have anything to write about.
So, you know, pleasant dreams, and keep watching the skies.
The bad news, of course, is that little asteroids are more common than big asteroids. Harder to spot, and if the Sandia analysis is correct, more likely to hit Earth than anyone expected. So you have lots of little bullets doing more damage.
Truth be told, it's not really worth worrying about--it's not like there's a damn thing you can do about it, and you have to reckon that even a Tunguska Events-sized object is more likely to airburst over the ocean or some bit of remote countryside than over your hometown. Your hometown is a pretty insignificant target, after all. Still, it's interesting, and I didn't have anything to write about.
So, you know, pleasant dreams, and keep watching the skies.
Comments
Say, Eric, you know your blogger profile shows you being born in 1935? I have to say you are an impressively spry and surprisingly hip 72.
That should be a birth year of 1972; now that you've called my attention to it, I've attempted to fix it--along with my location, which is about 500' from Gojira, only in the United States (not sure how I got moved to Afghanistan in Blogger's mind; I hope I haven't given the incorrect impression I'm in the armed forces).
(I'm tempted to change it to Japan, in keeping with the joke locale, but in a week or two I'll be changing the locale to LV-426, and Zeta II Reticuli isn't listed in the drop-down box....)