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:Hmm..

[teebob21]

Would there be any chance of a small asteroid (one that could cause some problems) currently heading for earth not be detected yet by scientists?

Yes. There is a very real chance that a chunk of rock the size of a basketball court could come at us tomorrow. A very very small, but very real chance. Asteroids that come from the sunward side of Earth's orbit are harder to detect because they are obscured by the Sun. One could come from that direction and astronomers may never see it. Most of the meteors that streak across the night sky are space stones no bigger than your hand, and usually about the size of a pea or smaller. Larger ones come down, but very infrequently. It is impossible for astronomers to chart, track or project the trajectories of the billions of space rocks left over from the formation of the Solar System.

Imagine a world where a small asteroid fragment or comet had struck Russia 60 years after Tunguska - during the depths of the Cold War. It would be a very different world today indeed.

Currently Reading.

[Daemonax]

I'm currently reading Arthur C. Clarke's 'Rendezvous with Rama', which opens with the lines "Soon or later, it was bound to happen. On June 30, 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometers -- a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe."

In the book, we humans then go on to set up systems to track asteroids that may be a danger to earth, and set up defense systems against them. I know that we currently track some, but how well funded are these organizations that do this? This is really something that is quite important, as it is almost certainly just a matter of when, not if. 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?

Re:I've often wondered

[mastershake_phd]

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.

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 by -insert reason here-"

Insufficient political attention

[Kupfernigk]

The British MP Lembit Opik (name is Scandinavian) has attempted to draw attention to the seriousness of the problem. The media dismiss him as a crank. Watching him on television it has been apparent that television presenters and the like are bottomlessly ignorant on the subject, and because they can't admit it, they just seek to trivialise the issue.

OK, we shouldn't expect media people to know everything, but we are very poorly served by their almost total scientific ignorance. I suspect that politicians would have become interested in global warming much sooner were the mass media not so piss poor at explaining scientific issues to the public, and almost perversely proud of it.

Re:I've often wondered

[Anonymous Coward]

"Also, possibly a country where it's important to keep appearances - leaders must be seen to be in charge, so they would react quicker than a thorough investigation would require. I can't think of many like that. North Korea maybe?"

Strikes me that America fits the bill admirably. Bush would order an attack on Iran faster than you could blink if this happened in Wyoming....

So Asteroids are fine but weapons are a no-go??

[Anonymous Coward]

What strikes me (excuse the pun) is that now they've determined it was an asteroid the attitude is "oh well these things happen - at least it wasn't someones big secret weapon".

Ok, so let me ask, whats the difference?

If it was a big super weapon like a Nuke everyone would be panic strikken. Because it was just a asteroid there is no reason to worry. Lets not forget that large enough asteroids could wipe out the entire planet (not just one or 2 countries like our nukes..)

On the trail of common sense, why is a football player a hero, yet we have troops in Iraq that are only recognised as a hero once they arrive home in a wooden box with lots of press coverage?

The world has gone completely mad..

Re:Insufficient political attention

[owlnation]

The British MP Lembit Opik (name is Scandinavian) has attempted to draw attention to the seriousness of the problem. The media dismiss him as a crank.

I wonder why they do dismiss him? Global warming was the same. It seems curious in the face of the fact that the media, and the UK media in particular, spend most of their energy drumming up irrational abstract things to be afraid of (terrorists, pedophiles, etc etc), things which are unlikely to ever affect many in the UK.

Here are issues that, while rare, are real and should have contingency plans. Makes no sense.

Bad Summary

[anilg]

Was it a UFO crash? An alien weapons test?

Summaries on /. have started to deteriorate in quality. Was there any need for the above? Isnt it just pandering to the WOOWOOists? Why the need to add a tinge pseudo-science to science?

You wont add "Is it the by homeopathy? Ayurveda perhaps" to an article on a new medicine/cure..

Editors/Firehosers note.

/rant

Re:I've often wondered

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I've spent ages writing insightful, interesting, funny comments only to have them modded down, and that's all it takes to get a +5? Frigging 'Badly.'?

Ye gads.

Re:The Gist

[argStyopa]

I'm less concerned about a single city, which would be devastating but survivable.
What scares me more was the (2004?) near-miss of an asteroid that could have hit somewhere in Pakistan or India precisely when they were in the middle of a very tense standoff. With immature command/control systems, what are the odds that would escalate into a nuclear shooting war, which would kill not the 10's or 100's of thousands of a single strike, but the 10's or 100's of MILLIONS of the resulting conflict.

THAT'S terrifying.

Re:The Gist

[elrous0]

After that animal crackers scene, I'd rather put my faith in Robert Duvall and his team of young, but dedicated, astronauts [imdb.com].

Re:The Gist

[Stormwatch]

Michael Bay and the world's most epileptic camera will give us a headache again

There, fixed for ya.

Re:The Gist

[bkr1_2k]

I think you've confused asteroids with large lizards and flying sea monsters.

Re:Currently Reading.

[bwcbwc]

Actually 2 if you count the moon. Remember the huge number of craters that exist on the far side of the moon compared with the near side? I'm not saying all of those would've struck the earth, but we'd certainly be living in a different world if even a small percentage of them had struck.