Who Says There's No Good News?: "The likelihood in this century of an asteroid impact with 700 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima A-bomb: 30%."

There isn't any connection between the asteroid and the meteorite. The meteorite was travelling - roughly - north to south and the asteroid was traveling (is travelling?) roughly south to north. They cannot have ever been parts of the same object in space. How do I know this? It's part of "white privilege": I was instructed on arcane knowledge forbidden to people of color, in this case, celestial mechanics. Besides, both the U.K. Space Agency and NASA announced that earlier, this morning, about 10:30 CST.

Posted by Ike at February 15, 2013 2:10 PM

Credible people write that the two pieces could in fact be from the same source even with the collision bound object hitting from an opposite angle. What's credible about NASA anymore?

Posted by james wilson at February 15, 2013 6:26 PM

Just another reminder of the awesome power inherent in nature. Even if we had seen the meteor coming, there's nothing that could have been done about it, and if it had actually exploded over (or landed in) Chelyabinsk instead of in the mountains, the loss of life would have been horrific. If one of these is headed your way at 33,000 mph, it doesn't really matter where it comes from.

Posted by waltj at February 15, 2013 9:56 PM

The MSM gave 33,000, 46,000 and 330,000 as the speed of the object, depending on which babbling head pronounced it as gospel.

My only regret with the objects passage is, the damn thing isn't steerable. Having that land in or in close proximity to Wash. DC would have elevated the occurrence to more air time than Sandy Hook and Storm Sandy combined.

It would have eliminated more dinosaurs and cleaned up a massive source of pollution.

Posted by Vermont Woodchuck at February 16, 2013 4:44 AM

There are millions of radars and telescopes watching the skies all over the planet, and no one saw this coming?

Posted by mjazzguitar at February 16, 2013 5:48 AM

When you consider that orbital velocity is 17,500 mph, and escape velocity is 25,000 mph, and both have been achieved by man-made rockets, 33,000 mph is likely a realistic estimate of the meteor's speed. The videos showed it going horizon to horizon at an extremely high rate of speed. Don't know if 46,000 mph is also in the ballpark, but 330,000 mph is way high.

Posted by waltj at February 16, 2013 9:07 AM