When Comets Attack

Red Flayer writes "Popular Mechanics is running a story that describes one of the more interesting explanations for the Tunguska explosion of 1908: 'Now, a controversial new scientific study suggests that a chunk of a comet caused the 5-10 megaton fireball, bouncing off the atmosphere and back into orbit around the sun. The scientists have even identified a candidate Tunguska object — now more than 100 million miles away — that will pass close to Earth again in 2045.' Note that Popular Mechanics' definition of 'close to' is somewhat different than most people's — the comet will be 3.8 million miles away at its closest. At any rate, the key to this theory is that hydrogen and oxygen in the ice shard exploded upon entering the atmosphere, resulting in the difficult-to-explain blast pattern (previous theories contend that the object must have 'skipped' on the atmosphere and then re-entered at the exact same spot). This would also, sadly, dash the theory that Nikola Tesla was responsible."

Re:Could have been a huge deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way that they did when various plagues (Spanish Flu 1918, Black Death 1350) , enemy attacks (WW2 on all sides, Coventry, Dresden, Berlin, London, Tokyo & Hiroshima ).

People cope with it in various ways. Mass death is nothing new, unfortunately.

Re:Could have been a huge deal.

[mister_playboy]

The main distinction of this event would have been the sudden impact of it... total destruction in the blink of an eye; whichis distinct from the slow "creeping death" of a plague. Unlike war, this would obviously seem to not be the work of human foes... what would the cause be ascribed to? God? Aliens? Would people be okay with the cause being "improbable interstellar event"?

I just think it could have greatly impacted the values of the 20th century... would science be more important? Would people be even more superstitious? There are lots of possibilities.

They knew what it was...

[tjstork]

The Japanese were well aware of what had happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They had people working on an atomic bomb as well but they were barely scratching the surface of what needed to be done as they just did not have the industrial capacity.

Re:Could have been a huge deal.

[T Murphy]

Had it hit a heavily populated area we would have a lot more data than a bunch of trees in the middle of nowhere and the reports from peasants. It was over a decade before a scientist went out there- Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik in 1921 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event [wikipedia.org]. I would say there is a strong chance we would know what the thing actually was, which would allow for a calmer reaction than uneducated peasants fearing the apocalypse.

Now, if it hit a major city during the cold war, it may have triggered a nuclear holocaust...