[meteorite-list] Chelyabinsk at White House today

From: Michael Farmer <mike_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:10:35 -0700
Message-ID: <5786DAC8-5AB1-442C-B655-1EF6D5B259E1_at_meteoriteguy.com>

I was just in Chelyabinsk, a city under emergency for the last month, -20 and tens of thousands of windows blown out, not only glass, but entire walls of many buildings caved in, entire buildings collapsed, and more than 1500 wounded, some still in the hospital, and that was just a meteorite passing overhead 30 miles high.
Are you telling me that those hundreds of thousands of stones, doubtless many weighing tons, would not have killed thousands or destroyed hundreds of buildings if it had directly impacted the city at a high angle? I think the damage would have been catastrophic and the death toll in the thousands.


Michael Farmer

Sent from my iPad

On Mar 25, 2013, at 6:08 PM, Chris Peterson <clp at alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:

> It's extremely doubtful that this body could have done all that much more damage. It simply wasn't big enough, or strong enough. A little steeper (or just as likely, as little shallower), a little earlier or later, probably wouldn't have made much difference.
>
> While I'd love to see a constellation of IR space telescopes looking for asteroids in this size range, realistically there's probably nothing we could do if we found one, and as a matter of public policy, the money might well be considered poorly spent.
>
> The reality is that the actual risk to human life and property from small asteroids is absurdly small compared to a large number of other things that we actually have some control over.
>
> Chris
>
> *******************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
>
> On 3/25/2013 3:15 PM, Michael Farmer wrote:
>> Congratulations to Dante Lauretta of UOfA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Osiris-Rex mission, who presented a piece of Chelyabinsk that I donated, to President Obama and Congress today while there to discuss the threat of asteroid impact.
>>
>> Chelyabinsk was almost a "City Killer" as Richard Kowalski told me yesterday, had it come in a few second earlier and steeper angle, a million people in Chelyabinsk would likely be dead today.
>> Time to take meteorites serious.
>>
>> Michael Farmer
>
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Received on Mon 25 Mar 2013 10:10:35 PM PDT