Asteroid the 'Size of a Minivan' Exploded Over California

astroengine writes, quoting Discovery: "The source of loud 'booms' accompanied by a bright object traveling through the skies of Nevada and California on Sunday morning has been confirmed: it was a meteor. A big one. It is thought to have been a small asteroid that slammed into the atmosphere at a speed of 15 kilometers per second (33,500 mph), turning into a fireball, delivering an energy of 3.8 kilotons of TNT as it broke up over California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, classified it as a 'big event.' 'I am not saying there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California,' Cooke told Spaceweather.com. 'I am saying that the meteor possessed this amount of energy before it broke apart in the atmosphere. (The map) shows the location of the atmospheric breakup, not impact with the ground.' Interestingly, this event was bigger than asteroid 2008 TC3 that exploded over the skies of Sudan in 2008 after being detected before it hit."

Re:Can't we detect something that size?

[quenda]

NASA tracks space debris the size of a golf ball, why didn't they see this?

Because it was not in a low-earth orbit, and space is kind of big.

Re:How convenient.

[Surt]

They are probably going to have to look for a different one.

Too bad

[DinDaddy]

'I am not saying there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California,' Cooke told Spaceweather.com.

Love that he has to pre-empt the sound bite stupidity of the press. Too bad t won't work and they'll publish the stupid headline anyway.

Re:Too bad

[dgatwood]

Easier.

"... there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California," Cooke told Spaceweather.com.

Two things holding up asteroid tracking

[Grayhand]

We need to start calling asteroids "terrorists" and there needs to be oil found on one. We can waste a trillion dollars fighting a handful of poorly funded religious zealots and yet we struggle to maintain even minimal funding to track objects that can easily take out a city if not most of the life on the planet. I keep hearing how rare they are yet there have been several of these high altitude bursts fairly recently and Tunguska was a little over a hundred years ago. If Tunguska sized blasts happen once in a hundred years aren't we due for one? Also how do we know? We haven't been keeping track of them for a hundred years and even historical evidence is sketchy. The planet would barely notice a city sized blast if there weren't large numbers of people below it. Also it's math not established fact. We can go 200 years with no major strikes then have a dozen in a single year then no more for a thousand years and the statistics may still call them once in a hundred year events. None of us may live to see one yet they can happen at any time. Kind of like a lottery you don't want to win.

Re:Can't we detect something that size?

[Ruie]

Why? It's not like we can do anything. Personally, I would not like to know that a meteor is about to slam into the earth and end life as we know it.

We can tell people to move..

I'm more interested

[jd]

....in where it landed. Meteorites are valuable, especially if linkable to a historic event.

In terms of significance, 100,000 tonnes (110,231 tons) of matter falls into Earth's atmosphere every year. This was 70 tonnes. Not a significant fraction of the total mass per year, but still quite respectable. Besides, you probably wouldn't want the yearly quota in one lump sum.