g of ty-one fragments. “Mysense,” e one, “is t Jupiter s up so much as a burp.”
One , Nature ran an article, “tingt t itute noteor shower.
ts began on July 16, 1994, on for a ion of Gene Sed. One fragment, knoruck six million megatons—seventy-five times moretence. Nucleus G tain, but it created ics of theory.
Luis Alvarez never kneer or of t, as , ralian outback, o searc sites. On a dirt track in tanami Desert—normally one oftiest places on Eart rise just as anotantly, of totor spacecraft. t tered around MeteorCrater.
Anderson and itzke no longer er t killed t ill and most perfectly preserved impact crater in ted States,”
Anderson said. (A little verbal dexterity is required to keep Manson’s superlative status. Oters are larger—notably, C site in1994—but to ters of limestone and mostly offs difficult to study,” Anderson on, “’s because it is buried t it is actuallycomparatively pristine.”
I asked tooday.
“O be visible to tilit il it tmosp onesecond before it talking about sometens of timesfaster test bullet. Unless it elescope, and t’sby no means a certainty, it ake us completely by surprise.”
or s depends on a lot of variables—angle of entry, velocity andtrajectory, ing object, among mucer t. But ists can do—and Anderson and itzke site and calculate t of energy released. From t tplausible scenarios of must happened now.
An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities er tmospsuc t couldn’t get out of tly, and temperature belo o some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times temperature of tant of its arrival in our atmospeor’s patories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in aflame.
One second after entering tmospeorite o t before been going about their business.
teorite itself antly, but t a ters of rock, earted gases. Every living t been killed by t of entry . Radiating outalmost t ial s.
For tside te devastation, t inkling of catastrop—test ever seen by ant to ami