5 ms·

Impacts of this magnitude exploding near enough to the surface to cause significant damage on land are not common at all - perhaps on the order of once per cent

by q1w2 5y ago

Impacts of this magnitude exploding near enough to the surface to cause significant damage on land are not common at all - perhaps on the order of once per century - given the recording of modern technology over the last ~150 years (obvious wide margin of error there). Despite that, hitting the city in OPs article, even 35 centuries ago, still seems like an extremely low probability event happened.

garmaine 5y ago
Given the distribution of land vs. sea, a recorded once per century event is probably once per 25 years or so in actuality (it just usually happens over the ocean).
- foobar1962 5y ago
  Would such an event in/over the ocean create a tsunami?
  - taylorfinley 5y ago
    It certainly could! From a blog post by Dr. David Burney, discussing the possible sources for a huge tsunami he uncovered evidence of in a sinkhole on the South side of Kauai: "One intriguing possibility that several astrophysicists suggested to me when I presented this evidence at a symposium on catastrophes in London shortly after 9/11, is that of a large meteorite striking the ocean near Kaua`i. In that scenario, a lot of water could be thrown up on the adjacent shore, but unless it was very, very large, it wouldn’t necessarily have traveled very far." [0] Eventually a paper [1] was published that narrowed down the actual source of this tsunami to a massive earthquake, getting quite a bit of media coverage [2] at the time. [0] http://cavereserve.org/blog/?p=410 http://cavereserve.org/blog/?p=410 [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-016-2650-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-016-2650-0 [2] https://www.livescience.com/48362-massive-historical-hawaii-tsunami.html https://www.livescience.com/48362-massive-historical-hawaii-...
  - q1w2 5y ago
    Not in this case since we're talking about atmospheric bolite explosions, and not ocean impacts from larger asteroids - which on the scale in question - are far less likely.
echelon 5y ago
> given the recording of modern technology over the last ~150 years Is it possible we could pass through a non-uniform, high probability density region? Perhaps a debris field where the orbit intersection with Earth is infrequent, but periodic?

by q1w2 5y ago

garmaine 5y ago

Given the distribution of land vs. sea, a recorded once per century event is probably once per 25 years or so in actuality (it just usually happens over the ocean).

foobar1962 5y ago
Would such an event in/over the ocean create a tsunami?
- taylorfinley 5y ago
  It certainly could! From a blog post by Dr. David Burney, discussing the possible sources for a huge tsunami he uncovered evidence of in a sinkhole on the South side of Kauai: "One intriguing possibility that several astrophysicists suggested to me when I presented this evidence at a symposium on catastrophes in London shortly after 9/11, is that of a large meteorite striking the ocean near Kaua`i. In that scenario, a lot of water could be thrown up on the adjacent shore, but unless it was very, very large, it wouldn’t necessarily have traveled very far." [0] Eventually a paper [1] was published that narrowed down the actual source of this tsunami to a massive earthquake, getting quite a bit of media coverage [2] at the time. [0] http://cavereserve.org/blog/?p=410 http://cavereserve.org/blog/?p=410 [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-016-2650-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-016-2650-0 [2] https://www.livescience.com/48362-massive-historical-hawaii-tsunami.html https://www.livescience.com/48362-massive-historical-hawaii-...
- q1w2 5y ago
  Not in this case since we're talking about atmospheric bolite explosions, and not ocean impacts from larger asteroids - which on the scale in question - are far less likely.

echelon 5y ago

> given the recording of modern technology over the last ~150 years Is it possible we could pass through a non-uniform, high probability density region? Perhaps a debris field where the orbit intersection with Earth is infrequent, but periodic?