[meteorite-list] Averting a collision with asteroids

From: Shawn Alan <shawnalan_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 13:47:22 -0700
Message-ID: <20140616134722.e8713c95af9984a493c5db01816d4c10.fc8b39abf1.wbe_at_email22.secureserver.net>

Hello Listers

Found this online :)
Enjoy

Shawn Alan
IMCA 1633
ebay store http://www.ebay.com/sch/imca1633nyc/m.html
Website http://meteoritefalls.com

Averting a collision with asteroids

BY WILLIAM E. BURROWS
 
weburrows at aol.com
 

Chicken Little was right. The sky fell again, this time over the city of
Chelyabinsk, Siberia, on the morning of Feb. 15, 2013 when a meteor
exploded, injuring almost 1,500 people and damaging more than 7,200
buildings. Some of the startled Russians immediately thought that it was
an American ICBM and that a third world war had started.

But they were lucky, and they knew it. Another meteor blew up over
Tunguska, also in Siberia, on June 30, 1908. It flattened millions of
trees over 800 square miles.

Had that event occurred over Chelyabinsk, the dead would have numbered
in the many thousands.

A world war is indeed under way. It is between this world and so-called
Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs in astronomical shorthand ? asteroids
(also called minor planets), meteors (shooting stars), meteorites,
meteoroids (they are named according to size, their distance from Earth,
or whether they hit it) and comets ? that get too close, and it has
been going on since this solar system formed.

Earth exists in an abidingly dangerous neighborhood. The late Eugene
Shoemaker, a geologist and the first de facto planetary scientist, said
that NEOs amount to a ?hail of bullets.? The home planet has more
than 130 known impact craters and countless others that are on the ocean
floor or have been covered by shifting land masses.

Read more here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/06/14/4176811/averting-a-collision-with-asteroids.html#storylink=cpy
Received on Mon 16 Jun 2014 04:47:22 PM PDT