Happy Asteroid Day!

[WLJ]

Don't get your hopes up, we're not getting smacked by a big fat asteroid, thought the day is still young . Asteroid Day is held on the anniversary of the Tunguska event in 1908 to raise awareness about the dangers of asteroids because you know what we need most of all nowadays is ANOTHER awareness day

https://asteroidday.org/

Asteroid Day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_Day

[Jim147]

You tease.

[HankB]

Asteroid Day . . . what an appropriate end to Pride Month.

[WLJ]

Asteroid Day . . . what an appropriate end to Pride Month.

 

[230RN]

Quick comparison data from WIKI:

Tunguska asteroid 1908

Outcome:   Flattening 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi) of forest.
Devastation to local plants and animals
Deaths   0 confirmed, 3 possible
Property damage:A few damaged buildings


Chelyabinsk meteor 2013

1,500 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical treatment. All of the injuries were due to indirect effects rather than the meteor itself, mainly from broken glass from windows that were blown in when the shock wave arrived, minutes after the superbolide's flash. No reported deaths.

The usual advice about not looking through windows if there is a bright flash does not pertain here, when the shock wave arrived minutes  afterward. There were many many blindings in the atomic bomb blasts, the Halifax explosion, and very probably the Beirut explosion.  Hatcher notes that in the Picatinny Arsenal explosion, one Officer noticed the bright flash and with excellent wisdom, threw himself on the floor.  Glass from the window he was looking through was found embedded in the oak door on the opposite side of the room.

7,200 buildings in six cities across theregion were damaged by the meteor explosion's shock wave.

"...with a speed relative to Earth of 19.16 ± 0.15 kilometres per second (69,000 km/h or 42,690 mph)."

That's the first time I've seen a relative speed statement in one of these astronomical blurbs. After all, the thing had no velocity at all as far as it was concerned. Thanks, Al.

Terry, 230RN

REF:

https://youtu.be/lCufivZJNUQ (1:58)

[RoadKingLarry]

[WLJ]

It's headed for Uranus!

[MillCreek]

While we are on the topic of wide-spread geologic destruction, I just started a series by Harry Turtledove called 'Supervolcano'.  It is about the economic, social, and climate destruction from a supervolcano eruption in Yellowstone park.  A good read so far.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera

[230RN]

I read similar descriptions of the devastation.  May even be  your source.

It's one of those things you don't have to worry about if you live within 1000 miles of it.

If it goes, you goes.

Terry, 220RN


REF (Colorado's very own supervolcano.  Biggest ever.  Makes comparative reference to the Chicxulub meteor extinction event  in Yucatan ):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Garita_Caldera

[RoadKingLarry]

SVOD, SMOD...Whatever it takes.

[230RN]

Found a diagram of the Yellowstone pimple:

[Tuco]

Meanwhile, on the other side of the island...
There's no place to hide from solar flares and magnetic storms.

https://www.wired.com/story/sun-storm-end-civilization/

Wired does a panic piece for the first day of summer featuring a humorously accessible account of thermodynamic solar geology and worst case scenarios from interplanetary magnetic storms.

[lee n. field]

Quick comparison data from WIKI:

Tunguska asteroid 1908

Outcome:   Flattening 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi) of forest.
Devastation to local plants and animals
Deaths   0 confirmed, 3 possible
Property damage:A few damaged buildings

Location, location, location.

Consider what happened to Sodom & Gomorrah.

But there is a 1.5-meter interval in the Middle Bronze Age II stratum that caught the interest of some researchers for its “highly unusual” materials. In addition to the debris one would expect from destruction via warfare and earthquakes, they found pottery shards with outer surfaces melted into glass, “bubbled” mudbrick and partially melted building material, all indications of an anomalously high-temperature event, much hotter than anything the technology of the time could produce.


In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3,600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. Located on high ground in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea, the settlement in its time had become the largest continuously occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant, having hosted early civilization for a few thousand years. At that time, it was 10 times larger than Jerusalem and 5 times larger than Jericho.

“It’s an incredibly culturally important area,” said James Kennett, emeritus professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara. “Much of where the early cultural complexity of humans developed is in this general area.”

A favorite site for archaeologists and biblical scholars, the mound hosts evidence of culture all the way from the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, all compacted into layers as the highly strategic settlement was built, destroyed, and rebuilt over millennia.

But there is a 1.5-meter interval in the Middle Bronze Age II stratum that caught the interest of some researchers for its “highly unusual” materials. In addition to the debris one would expect from destruction via warfare and earthquakes, they found pottery shards with outer surfaces melted into glass, “bubbled” mudbrick and partially melted building material, all indications of an anomalously high-temperature event, much hotter than anything the technology of the time could produce.

“We saw evidence for temperatures greater than 2,000 degrees Celsius,” said Kennett, whose research group at the time happened to have been building the case for an older cosmic airburst about 12,800 years ago that triggered major widespread burning, climatic changes and animal extinctions. The charred and melted materials at Tall el-Hammam looked familiar, and a group of researchers including impact scientist Allen West and Kennett joined Trinity Southwest University biblical scholar Philip J. Silvia’s research effort to determine what happened at this city 3,650 years ago.

[230RN]

NEVER MIND, I JUST "GOT" IT.  I WAS READING IT WRONG.  It was the similarity of effects between the two dates which was interesting to them.  OK, gotcha.
.........................................
I'm not clesr on why the two dates are so different in that narrative. (The why must be obvious; I'm just not "getting" it.)

...whose research group at the time happened to have been building the case for an older cosmic airburst about 12,800 years ago that triggered major widespread burning, climatic changes and animal extinctions. The charred and melted materials at Tall el-Hammam looked familiar, and a group of researchers including impact scientist Allen West and Kennett joined Trinity Southwest University biblical scholar Philip J. Silvia’s research effort to determine what happened at this city 3,650 years ago.*

Is there any estimation of the dates for  the Sodom and Gomorrah destruction?  All I can get on a quickie search is "the time of Abraham."

Coffee, Terry,  Coffee.

[HankB]

. . . Is there any estimation of the dates for  the Sodom and Gomorrah destruction?  All I can get on a quickie search is "the time of Abraham." . . .

From earlier posts it was thought to have possibly happened somewhere around 1650 BC - lots of hand waving and uncertainty there. Considering how long before the Gregorian  - or even Julian - calendars this may have happened, any dates someone threw out would be little more than wild guesses.

[230RN]

Well, archaic dates aren't that inaccurrate.  It was the 9000 years difference between the dates which threw me until the scales fell from my eyes.

Biblical veracity aside, like the investigators, I would also be curious as to what might have happened in the later event to produce those similar effects. 

[WLJ]

Scott Manley
@DJSnM
People are making crude jokes about Rectilinear orbits.

So here's an asteroid on a rectilinear orbit going into Uranus.

https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1542901756383809537?cxt=HBwWgsCqiaG-vukqAAAA&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email