Surprise: Earth Is Hit By a Lot More Asteroids Than You Thought

When we think of recent large asteroid impacts on Earth, only a handful come to mind. In particular, one is the forest-flattening 1908 Tunguska explosion over Siberia (which may have been the result of a comet) and the February 2013 meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, shattering windows with its air blast. Both occurred in Russia, the largest country on Earth, and had human witnesses — in the case of the latter many witnesses thanks to today’s ubiquitous dashboard cameras.

While it’s true that those two observed events took place 105 years apart, there have been many, many more large-scale asteroid impacts around the world that people have not witnessed, if only due to their remote locations… impact events that, if they or ones like them ever occurred above a city or populated area, could result in destruction of property, injuries to people, or worse.

(And these are only the ones we’ve found out about over the past 13 years.)

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Read the rest of Surprise: Earth Is Hit By a Lot More Asteroids Than You Thought (219 words)

© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: asteroid, B612, Bill Anders, Chelyabinsk, impact, Museum of Flight, neo, Sentinel, Tunguska

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