Is an Urban Tunguska Close at Hand?

 

In the wake of the meteorite explosion the Russian city of Chelyabinsk people two years ago today on Friday February 15^th, 2013, we ask the question: Is Urban Tunguska Close at Hand?

The meteorite exploded with thirty times the explosive yield of the atomic bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima and injured about 1,100 people.

A possible disaster scenario where a sizable asteroid or meteorite explodes over or impacts a major urban center can no longer be treated as mere science fiction whimsy.

The Chelyabinsk  Event was a relatively minor incident. Next time we may not be so lucky.

Disaster: This graphic shows the sequence of events which led to the meteor crashing in Russia (the Daily Mail)

According to the Daily Mail:

Fireball from outer space: 1,000 injured as 40-ton meteor travelling at 33,000mph explodes over a terrified town

• Large object flashed across the sky at 9.20am local time
• Pictures show a streak of smoke followed by several bright blasts of flames
• 82 of the injured are children and two are in intensive care
• Landed in a lake near Chebarkul, a neighbouring town
• 6,000 square feet of a roof at a zinc factory collapsed
• One local said it 'was like a scene from the Armageddon movie'

 

NOVA - Meteor Strike

SPACEGUARD     Sooner or later, it was bound to happen.  On June 30, 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometers—a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe.  On February 12, 1947, another Russian city had a still narrower escape, when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century detonated less than four hundred kilometers from Vladivostok, with an explosion rivaling that of the newly invented uranium bomb.
    In those days there was nothing that men could do to protect themselves against the last random shots in the cosmic bombardment that had once scarred the face of the Moon.  The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twenty-first century there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for celestial target practice.  The human race had spread from pole to pole.  And so, inevitably . . .
    At 0946 GMT on the morning of September 11 in the exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky.  Within seconds it was brighter than the Sun, and as it moved across the heavens—at first in utter silence—it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke.
    Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of concussions so violent that more than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged.  They were the lucky ones.
    Moving at fifty kilometers a second, a thousand tons of rock and metal impacted on the plains of northern Italy, destroying in a few flaming moments the labor of centuries.  The cities of Padua and Verona were wiped from the face of the Earth; and the last glories of Venice sank forever beneath the sea as the waters of the Adriatic came thundering landward after the hammer blow from space.
    Six hundred thousand people died, and the total damage was more than a trillion dollars.  But the loss to art, to history, to science—to the whole human race, for the rest of time—was beyond all computation.  It was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning; and few could draw much pleasure from the fact that, as the dust of destruction slowly settled, for months the whole world witnessed the most splendid dawns and sunsets since Krakatoa.
    After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a determination and a unity that no earlier age could have shown.  Such a disaster, it was realized, might not occur again for a thousand years—but it might occur tomorrow.  And the next time, the consequences could be even worse.
    Very well; there would be no next time.
    A hundred years earlier, a much poorer world, with far feebler resources, had squandered its wealth attempting to destroy weapons launched, suicidally, by mankind against itself.  The effort had never been successful, but the skills acquired then had not been forgotten. Now they could be used for a far nobler purpose, and on an infinitely vaster stage.  No meteorite large enough to cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach the defenses of Earth.
    So began Project SPACEGUARD.  Fifty years later—and in a way that none of its designers could ever have anticipated—it justified its existence.
  From Chapter #1
Rendezvous with Rama
A novel by Arthur C. Clarke
Copyright 1973 

Today on Far Future Horizons, we present an exciting episode from the acclaimed PBS documentary series NOVA titled Meteor Strike. 

Today marks the second anniversary of the Chelyabinsk Event of February 15^th, 2013. On this date, a 10,000 metric ton asteroid exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk with thirty times the explosive yield of the atomic bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6^th, 1945.

The Chelyabinsk Event highlights the urgent need to establish a planetary defense system to protect the Earth from future impact events.

A potential disaster scenario where a sizable asteroid or meteorite explodes over or impacts a major urban center can no longer be treated as mere science fiction fancy. It happened on February 15^th, 2013 when over 1,000 people were actually injured. And, it will one day happen again perhaps with far greater devastating results.