Thank you Russian dashboard cams! The best recorded meteor event of all time happened recently, and should be a wakeup call for us all. This tiny piece of rock - which explodes as you see above - caused fairly extensive damage over the city below mostly due to the pressure wave of the explosion, which blew out windows and knocked down some rickety walls.
And this was just a tiny rock. Here's (possibly) the final impact spot:
Get some learnin' in slick modern inforgraphic form!
Click for big. The takeaway lesson here, friends, is we are in great peril. From a variety of sources. Meteors/asteroids are one of these threats - and something we could do something about, if we had the collective will. And we should - it is INEVITABLE that a large rock will hit the Earth again and send everything into collective turmoil. This has happened many, many times in the past and WILL happen again. Only a question of when. We might be able to see it coming, but we might not. Isn't the entire existence of humanity worth trying to protect? I think so, and so look forward to the day the leading nations of Earth agree to jointly fund a peaceful program of monitoring and engagement of space rocks.
Bonus extra feature: Space mining. We could make it happen right now, if we wanted to. But I guess we (some) don't.
Vladimir's ready to save the world!
2 comments:
I have been saying this to people for years! We desperately need a solid space program, and if the Russian meteor and our close shave with 2012 DA14 wasn't enough of a warning to people, then I don't know what is.
Preach it! I agree completely. Alas, it seems as if this is too abstract a concept to rally people behind, until it's too late.
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