Meteorite hits central Russia, 400+ injured

[Darwin333]

Asteroid 2012 DA14 Passed 17000 miles from the earth and they call it a close shave. I mean 17000 miles is a big distance IMO

In astrological terms 17,000 miles is absurdly small. It passed closer than some of the satellites we use.

 

[Darwin333]

That is why I said they break up but not explode. Reading the article it sounded like the whole thing suddenly exploded like a bomb. The shock wave is not even part of a explosion but just sonic boom

What about the one that hit in Siberia a while back? I am pretty sure it "exploded" above the ground because they didn't find an impact crater yet it leveled a fuckton of area.

 

[Darwin333]

I was agreeing with you. The word "explode" is commonly used, but it doesn't mean what people think it means in this context.

What about the Tunguska Event? Did that one "explode" in the same context that most people think?

The Tunguska event was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 07:14 KRAT (00:14 UT) on June 30 [O.S. June 17], 1908.[2][3][4] The explosion, having the epicentre (60.886°N, 101.894°E), is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 mi) above the Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded widely varying estimates of the object's size, on the order of 100 metres (330 ft).[5] It is the largest impact event on or near Earth in recorded history.[6] The number of scholarly publications on the problem of the Tunguska explosion since 1908 may be estimated at about 1,000 (mainly in Russian). Many scientists have participated in Tunguska studies, the best-known of them being Leonid Kulik, Yevgeny Krinov, Kirill Florensky, Nikolai Vladimirovich Vasiliev, and Wilhelm Fast.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

 

[stlc8tr]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/16/world/europe/russia-meteor-shower/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

This article says NASA says it exploded with 500 Kilotons of force. Hiroshima was 15 Kilotons.

WTF

This happened over a much, much larger area so it's not quite apple to apples, so to speak.