Largest Fireball Since Chelyabinsk Falls Over the Atlantic

[LongTomH]

As spokespersons for science, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, The Science Guy, and Phil Plait, who labels himself: The Bad Astronomer. He's done a great article on meteors, meteoroids, and asteroid near misses at Slate mag: Largest Fireball Since Chelyabinsk Falls Over the Atlantic:

On Feb. 6, 2016, around 14:00 UTC, a tiny chunk of interplanetary material plunged into Earth’s atmosphere and burned up — likely exploding — about 30 kilometers above the Atlantic Ocean. The energy released was equivalent to the detonation of 13,000 tons of TNT, making this the largest such event since the (much larger) Chelyabinsk blast in February 2013.

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For comparison, the Chelyabinsk explosion, which was strong enough to shatter windows and injure over 1000 people (due to flying glass), had an equivalent yield of 500,000 tons of TNT, 40 times the energy of this more recent impact.

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Given the explosive energy of the Feb. 6 meteoroid, if it were made of rock like the Chelyabinsk asteroid then it was very roughly 5-7 meters across; the size of a large living room, say. I calculated that by a straight comparison to Chelyabinsk: We know that was from a rock about 19 meters across; the energy released scales as the mass, and the mass increases with radius cubed for a sphere. So this is all approximate with a few guesses thrown in, but it’s probably close.

Phil posted a great video to accompany this article: Meteors: Crash Course Astronomy #23

[longship]

1. WooHoo for Phil Plait! The Bad(ass)Astronomer.

His Blog at Salon is one of daily morning visits.
Happy to R&K