Tunguska Blast Was a Small Asteroid

malachiorion writes "The Tunguska event, an explosion on June 30, 1908, cleared an 800-sq.-mi. swath of Siberian forest. Was it a UFO crash? An alien weapons test? Now, Sandia National Laboratories has released its own explanation for the Tunguska event. Using supercomputers to create a 3D simulation of the explosion, the Department of Energy-funded nuke lab has determined that Tunguska was, indeed, the explosion of a relatively small asteroid. The simulation videos are well worth checking out — they show a fireball slamming into the earth from the asteroid's air burst. The researchers caution that we should be keeping watch for many more small, potentially earth-impacting asteroids than we are currently tracking."

Re:Doh!

[bennomatic]

Aliens!

In Soviet Russia, the forest flattens the asteroids!

I welcome our new asteroid overlords.

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!

1. Flatten forest
2. ???
3. Profit!

Oh come off it!

[Psychotria]

Everybody knows it was Santa crash landing

Re:I've often wondered

[teebob21]

I've often wondered...how the populations (including the military) in some of the more... nervous areas of the globe would react to a suddden blinding light in the sky followed by an enormous blast wave.

Badly.

Re:Doh!

[PixieDust]

You forgot the most important one!!!

"The researchers caution that we should be keeping watch for many more small, potentially earth-impacting asteroids than we are currently tracking."

Nothing to see here! Move along!!

Sometime in the future

[tanveer1979]

A new study has been released proving that the fireball event in the server room was caused by slashdot and not an asteroid

Gitmo next for kdawson

[mach1980]

I'm not a US resident but isn't slashdotting/DoS-attacking a federally owned site a criminal/terror offence in the US?

Re:Doh!

[shawn443]

42, It was a giant cum shot from god. Bye karma. I wish I could think of shit insightful to say.

Re:The Gist

[RuBLed]

Yes, every asteroid on television will undoubtedly hit over New York or Los Angeles. There must be some exceptionally high gravitational field at those locations.

I'm not sure about that, most of the asteroid I had seen on television are hitting Kansas, particularly this small village...

Re:Currently Reading.

[Farmer Tim]

Do we have systems in place that will allow us to destroy or divert any large asteroids that are determined to be on a path to impact with earth?

Only one. [wikipedia.org] Be very afraid.

Re:Oh come off it!

[Plutonite]

These things do happen you know:

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSEIC85598720071219 [reuters.com]

Re:I've often wondered

[ozmanjusri]

Well the military wouldn't know who to attack, but you can be sure as hell someone would say "God did this because we made him angry

The answer's obvious then.

Nuke God.

You've got to admit, it'd solve a hell of a lot of problems.

Re:Doh!

[gbobeck]

a farting contest gone wrong.. terribly wrong...

Yeah, Chuck Norris showed up...

Re:Hmm..

[weicco]

It'll just probably break some windows and throw some chairs around.

Re:Doh!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"What else would it have been?"

The theory I've heard a few times was that it was anti-matter. Doctor Raymond Stanz, however, postulated that it may have been the result of a dimensional crossover. This theory has not been widely accepted, though, because no P.K. readings have been captured to support this claim.

We must mobilize...

[agw]

to destroy the Arachnid threat.

Re:I've often wondered

[AstronomicUID]

From orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Re:The Gist

[John Straffin]

Doesn't London get destroyed by dragons [imdb.com]?

Re:Doh!

[Whiteox]

Asteroid or Hammeroid?

Re:Doh!

[Spokehedz]

This is what happens when you cross the streams. DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS!

Re:The Gist

[hercubus]

It could be that volcanoes won't erupt under Los Angeles, ice hurricanes won't hit New York...

next you'll be saying a holly-jolly gravitationally challenged old guy won't be landing his caribou-powered flying sled on my rooftop some time on or after the upcoming winter solstice

look, we know flying fat elves and LA being violently destroyed in a day are only dreams, but let us have those dreams, eh? they're beautiful visions that make life worth living...

Re:The Gist

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, every asteroid on television will undoubtedly hit over New York or Los Angeles.

That's called "wishful thinking".

Re:The Gist

[YrWrstNtmr]

Yes, every asteroid on television will undoubtedly hit over New York or Los Angeles. There must be some exceptionally high gravitational field at those locations.

No, they just suck.

Fireball

[Tyler Durden]

From the article...

The new simulation which more closely matches the widely known facts of destruction than earlier models shows that the center of mass of an asteroid exploding above the ground is transported downward at speeds faster than sound. It takes the form of a high-temperature jet of expanding gas called a fireball.

Good thing we made the Saving Throw!

Re:Doh!

[protolith]

3)Something else = ???
4) Profit!!!

There Fixed that for you.

Re:The Gist

[Scrameustache]

(and why isn't Chicago or London ever destroyed?).

The Doctor.

Re:The Gist

[Darinbob]

No, they just suck.

Or the people living there are exceptionally dense.

Re:I've often wondered

[Reziac]

Pessimists... *Constantine* would've seen it as a good sign and built an empire on it. :)