Asteroid the 'Size of a Minivan' Exploded Over California 279
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."
Exploding Minivans (Score:5, Funny)
Always said the damn things were dangerous
mini (Score:3)
at least it was mini.
Re:mini (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Exploding Minivans (Score:5, Funny)
It wasn't a minivan though... remember this thing was clocked at 33,000 mph. When's the last time you saw a minivan even doing the speed limit?
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Not my fault. The speedo on my van is broken.
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Maybe it had a turbocharger
Chatting on a cellphone (Score:5, Funny)
Typical minivan driver, didn't even see a planet that was, well, the size of a planet before it was too late.
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Groping under and around the seat for the dropped Doritos bag, probably.
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Quick calculations (Score:5, Informative)
So for fun, I did some quick calculations. I'm not a physicist, but recalling the relationship between kinetic energy, mass, and velocity...
K = 3.8 kilotons TNT = 1.59*10^13 J = (1/2)mv^2
m = 2K/v^2 = 1.41*10^5 kg
So the mass was about 141,000 kg. According to a random source, the average minivan is about 17m^3 in size, so that would make the density of the object 8.3*10^3 kg/m^3, roughly equal to that of iron. So if my math is correct, this thing was basically the equivalent of a solid piece of iron the size of a minivan.
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Disregard that. I just RTFA, and the mass was calculated to be HALF of that figure: 70,000 kg. Would someone with a physics background be so kind as to show my error?
I expect they divided by two, just for the lulz. You know how crazy those physicists are.
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How convenient. (Score:2)
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They are probably going to have to look for a different one.
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Planetary Resources has their big announce tomorrow. This was just the size they are looking for.
It seems devastating to their business plan though - why spend billions of dollars going out into space to fetch big rocks when they are coming to us?
Re:How convenient. (Score:4, Funny)
"few tonnes of iron in orbit is worth a fortune"
no it isn't.
Yes, it is, if it stays in orbit.
"Dear Mr. <World_Leader>,
I have a large chunk of iron orbiting the planet, and it would be a real shame if it were to accidentally drop on your capitol city. How would you like to invest in a little insurance against that?"
minivan (Score:5, Funny)
For all the foreigners saying "WTF is a minivan?", it is a large family vehicle, smaller than a mini-bus, like a VW Transporter (Combi) , about 10 hogsheads or 0.00001 Libraries of Congress.
SI unit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SI unit (Score:5, Funny)
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Or they could just call it a "large MPV".
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People carrier to the British.
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Is the order:
segway, moped, motorbike, motor-trike, smart car, mini, small car, car, family car, SUV, minivan, Bentley, van, mini-bus, bus, truck, one-tonner, 18 wheeler ?
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This [auto-rickshaw.com] is a real mini-van.
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As for your list... sure, whatever.
Something missing.....;-) (Score:2)
Is the order:
segway, moped, motorbike, motor-trike, smart car, mini, small car, car, family car, SUV, minivan, Bentley, van, mini-bus, bus, truck, one-tonner, 18 wheeler ?
Hey!!!
Where does a station wagon fit in there?
I've got a crap-load of discs to transport...I need the bandwidth, you insensitive clod!
Re:minivan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:minivan (Score:5, Funny)
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Could I have that in Bay Area units? (Score:2)
American minivan, or European minivan? (Score:2)
Was this an American minivan, or a European one? (traces of Monty Python here...).
I'm sure an American minivan will be twice the size of a European one - and let's not even think about those super cool minivans you see in Tokyo....
UK minivan: 1.4 to 2 litre engine, room for 6 people, some bags.
US minivan? I'm guessing probably twice the size, air conditioning, armour plating, drinks coolers, on board home entertainment systems, 4 wheel drive.... ;-)
More or less correct (Score:2)
Re:minivan (Score:5, Funny)
For all the Americans saying "WTF is an asteroid?", it is a big space rock made by Jebus 6000 years ago. It has as much blow-uppy power as millions of pounds of dynamite (the calorie equivalent of a billion gallons of Extreme HotPocket PizzaHut Lard Thins), and, if it were to hit California, could result in a a postponed airing of Dancing With the Stars. To prevent this, we must pray for an end to the liberal gay marriage agenda targeting our children in the public schools of Obamamerica, and make sure every patriot has a gun to send future asteroids back across the border before their lazy anchor meteorites take our jobs and food stamps. God bless the troops!
Thankyouverymuch.
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AC, you really should stop watching Fox News. Its obviously not good for your blood pressure.
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Extreme HotPocket PizzaHut Lard Thins
I just threw up in my mouth a little.
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Yes, because the US president has full power to do whatever the fuck he wants. Why is it that so many Americans think that the president is some kind of all-powerful dictator? Did you fall asleep during civics class? Or do you think that every president gets handed a do-what-you-want cudgel like Bush did with 9/11?
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The VW Transporter is firmly in the 'van' or minibus category.
A minivan is based on a passenger car; examples include the Renault Espace and Chrysler Voyager. They usually weigh less than 2 tons and seat up to 7 people.
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Now I'm imagining four larger than life Americans squeezing into a van 600x600x900mm in size.
Or do American have really, really big washing machines?
The truth! (Score:5, Funny)
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...well you can pretty much put the rest together.
Not quite (Score:2)
In 2064 the NHSVSA (National Highways and space vehicles safety authority) will still be arguing over what to do about vehicles going backwards in time that are also in reverse, and whether this means that brake lights as well as headlights need to emit tachyons.
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Diggin' My Ride From Outer Space [youtube.com]
Can't we detect something that size? (Score:4, Interesting)
NASA tracks space debris the size of a golf ball, why didn't they see this? This is yet another example of how asteroid detection need a higher priority.
Re:Can't we detect something that size? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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If you now assume that you need only a nanosecond to tell whether there is an asteroid in a given 1 meter cube or not (which would correspond to spending a few CPU/FPGA cycles on processing) then you need to be able to process
Re:Can't we detect something that size? (Score:4, Funny)
who says it wasnt tracked the whole 3 seconds it came into our range and blew up?
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It is now - just a VERY low orbit!
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Re:Can't we detect something that size? (Score:5, Insightful)
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..
Actually, I would (Score:4, Interesting)
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Inconstant moon.
Written in the day before cell phones and worldwide TV. The main character figured it out but most others were unaware. A much different scenario would happen nowadays. Maybe Lucifer's hammer is closer to what would happen.
Transformers (Score:5, Funny)
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Which one becomes a minivan? My kid doesn't have that one.
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Too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
'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.
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I'm sure that is exactly what they would run with, footage of *an explosion site*. Any explosion site would be good enough, why bother checking when you can just grab something from YouTube [hexus.net].
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Easier.
"... there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California," Cooke told Spaceweather.com.
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Or: "There was an explosion of nuclear scale in California" blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah "... there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California," Cooke told Spaceweather.com. blah
Melancholia (Score:3)
Anyone who has an interest in things smashing in to the earth (I do, it's some kind of very fascinating thing for me see: Thanatos) I recommend you check out this film, ideally on a screen absoloutely as large as possible.
There goes the hope for Druidia (Score:2)
How lethal is a meteorite fragment? (Score:2)
Does the heat generated as it passes through the atmosphere kill off any organisms that might have been traveling along with it as it flew through the galaxy? Having passed through the cosmos for who only knows how long, would a meteorite chunk be radioactive at all?
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It is fairly easy to find this out from google.
Generally, no appreciable levels of radiation are found in meteorites. One meteorite which fell in Japan a few years ago had some measurable radioactivity.
http://www.meteoritelab.com/meteorites/#13 [meteoritelab.com]
http://earth.s.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/ishiwata/labo/neagariUS.html [kanazawa-u.ac.jp]
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NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office (Score:2)
Who else read that as "NASA's Metroid Environment Office"?
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That one was shuttered long ago. After all, the last Metroid is in captivity and the galaxy is at peace [wikipedia.org].
Too bad the coasts were covered in fog... (Score:3)
It could have been a much bigger media event (Score:5, Interesting)
It hit in daylight over Reno-Tahoe.
Imagine if it had hit just a bit further west at night with clear weather. That would have resulted in a very bright flash at night and the aforementioned "rumbling and shaking" over the San Francisco Bay Area.
Now imagine that the orbital dynamics were such that this happened in 1982 instead of 2012. Then you get a bright flash and a rumble over a major metro area during the Cold War.
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It hit in daylight over Reno-Tahoe.
Imagine if it had hit just a bit further west at night with clear weather. That would have resulted in a very bright flash at night and the aforementioned "rumbling and shaking" over the San Francisco Bay Area.
Now imagine that the orbital dynamics were such that this happened in 1982 instead of 2012. Then you get a bright flash and a rumble over a major metro area during the Cold War.
No worries - that meteorites show up on radar (strongly) was well-known since World War 2.
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And then the various systems designed to detect nuclear attacks remain stubbornly silent... And in the days after, no radioactive materials are detected...
So, it happening in the middle of the Cold War results in pretty much what's happening today, a few hours media sensation. (And much less of a sensation than today, since
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The story goes that when the US first launched satellite-based nuclear weapons detection systems, they started freaking out over huge explosions occurring all the time over remote ocean areas where nobody lived. Turns out they were just meteorites like this one, which are a lot more common than people realized.
(Sorry, I can't find a source for this, it's just something I heard at a lecture once.)
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You know, there were fireballs during the cold war. The universe didn't stop just because of our geopolitical situation. I can remember hearing of one blast (a meteor over the ocean near South Africa) that caused discussion as being a possible test of a very small nuke. And, famously, the astrophysical gamma ray bursts were first detected by satellites sent up to detect gamma ray bursts from nuclear explosions. Somehow, we survived all these false alarms.
Two things holding up asteroid tracking (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Space Terrorists"
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Coincidentally, it looks like Planetary Resources (a new company backed by several well-known billionaires) is going to formally announce tomorrow their plans to launch 2-5 orbital telescopes in the next 18-24 months. The primary of the telescopes will be to look for near-Earth asteroids to mine, although this will of course also be useful for detecting potentially-dangerous asteroids. They also plan on selling orbital telescopes at a cost of a few million dollars each, which is cheap enough that you could
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If Tunguska sized blasts happen once in a hundred years aren't we due for one?
Asteroid impact is largely markovian [wikipedia.org], so no. The odds of another Tunguska were the same the month after as they are today.
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I would think orbital mechanics plays a part that eliminates markovian analysis. ( ie, large object breaks up into smaller pieces, which stay largely in the same orbital path, hence the perseid's meteor showers :)
Haley's comet as a predictable 75 year orbit, why wouldnt there be stuff with 100, 500, 1000, 10000 year orbits that cross our path ?
And then some Dead Heads crawled out of the van, (Score:2)
. . . bongs in hand, and loudly rasped, "Like, wow, man . . . "
Picture! (Score:5, Informative)
http://ktvn.images.worldnow.com/images/17652544_BG1.jpg [worldnow.com]
Re:Picture! (Score:4, Informative)
Source: http://www.ktvn.com/story/17652544/update-large-boom-heard-around-region-sunday [ktvn.com]
I'm more interested (Score:4, Insightful)
....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.
Damn Bugs (Score:3)
Are those Arachnids acting up again? Guess we better invade Klendathu once more before they can lob a bigger rock our way.
I actually saw it in Phoenix here (Score:2)
Was out and about sunday night.
And I was geek enough to have noted the az/elevation at the time.
Azmith was 325 to 350 or so, and Elevation was 50 deg down to about 30 degrees.
It was losing rather large chunks midway through it's burn..very much not like your normal meteorite.
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Was out and about sunday night.
And I was geek enough to have noted the az/elevation at the time.
Azmith was 325 to 350 or so, and Elevation was 50 deg down to about 30 degrees.
It was losing rather large chunks midway through it's burn..very much not like your normal meteorite.
omg, your saw it and didn't record it with one of the million electronic devices that have a camera in it?
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omg, your saw it and didn't record it with one of the million electronic devices that have a camera in it?
Well if he did that he would have had proof, seeing as how he obviously didn't see it that would make it hard to lie.
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That's the right direction, but the elevation is too high and the time is wrong. This one came down after sunrise, and would be over the horizon from Phoenix. You probably saw a rather large Lyrid meteor: large ordinary meteors will throw off sparks as they fall.
Probably pieces on the ground to find (Score:3)
A meteor this big probably didn't vaporize: if you live in the area you should be on the lookout for pieces on the ground.
I hesitate to say this, because it's a large area with a lot of ordinary rocks lying around, so there's going to be a huge number of not-actually-a-meteorite finds. This site http://meteorites.wustl.edu/what_to_do.htm [wustl.edu] gives the basics on figuring out if you've found a meteorite or not.
This meteor appears to be bigger than the one that came down over Chicago in 2003: quite a few large pieces were found then. But it's much easier to find meteorites in urban areas.
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In North Korea, rockets shoot themselves down - well at least that seems to be the case so far. Oh, apart from that lovely satelite that is still broadcasting songs praising the Glorious Leader [wikipedia.org] - that one is obviously still there.
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North Korea have exactly the rocket they need. The first stage of the rocket they tested can drop a nuke on Seoul. Thats all they want. If they demonstrate a rocket which can drop a nuke on Beijing they will be shut down as quickly as China can cut the money supply, so they won't do that.
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Most meteors you see are the size of grains of sand. This one was millions of times larger. "Millions of times larger than normal" is "a big one".
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Small asteroid [wikipedia.org], specifically a meteoroid. Big meteor [wikipedia.org].
Traditionally, small bodies orbiting the Sun were classified as asteroids, comets or meteoroids, with anything smaller than ten metres across being called a meteoroid. The term "asteroid" is ill-defined.
A meteor is the visible path of a meteoroid that has entered the Earth's atmosphere.
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The word is weltschmerz.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weltschmerz [merriam-webster.com]
Thanks to http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-german-words.php [toptenz.net]
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Weltanschauung (as posted by AC) is the way you view the world. More like an ideology, but deeper.
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Polenüberfallensmittelverzekering? Strassenbahnhaltestellelieferungswagen?
Re:How long... (Score:4, Funny)
Thats right the minivan you heard in the news. A unique, once in a lifetime opportunity to own a piece of history and space.
Slight signs of usage from entering the earths atmosphere make it even more authentic" This is your chance to buy the Minivan from space[tm] [flickr.com]