Of all the animals of prey, man is the only sociable one.
Every one of us preys upon his neighbour, and yet we herd together.
The Beggar's Opera: John Gay

Thursday, 2 January 2014

2014 AAaaaargh!

The year has started in an auspicious manner for asteroid-watchers with the possible impact (and subsequent disintegration) of 2014AA.

Spotted on New Year's Day, this pint-sized asteroid is believed to have burned up over the Atlantic at around 5am this morning (GMT).

As asteroids go, it was a tiddler at less than 2m in diameter; still, every fly-by is an excuse for a drink - cheers!

3 comments:

  1. I'd imagine 2m wide would still hurt a bit were you to find yourself in its path.

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  2. Makes you think about the physics because it must take a huge amount of heat to burn up even a 2m chunk of rock.

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  3. JH, I prefer to imagine someone else in its path - I have a handy list...

    AKH, according to skyandtelescope,

    Brown's rough guess is that the impact energy was equivalent to the explosive power of 500 to 1,000 tons of TNT

    Much to everyone's disappointment, it appears that no-one was looking at the time - an updated version of the tree falling in the forest.

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