NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/astro/14290

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-22 | 1.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!news.univie.ac.at!alijku11!k3032e0
Organization: Johannes Kepler University Linz - Computing Center
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 12:42:35 CET
From: <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: meteor over Italy = Killer meteorite ?
References:  <[e-mail]>
Lines: 21

Possibly this is the same object which is said to have killed two old
brothers when it destroyed their house in Croatia. I don't know weather this
is true, if so, it must have been rather large.

Nontheless, I think not even the largest telescopes on earth with the most
sensetive CCDs could have detected this small object before it entered the
earths atmosphere - not to mention to search for unknown bodies of this
size| After all, we are not able to detect most of the much larger near-earth
objects. I suppose some catastrophe like the Tunguska-event, which distroyed
a wide area in Siberia in 1908, would happen just as unexpected in our days.
There's not much change of discovering near-earth-objects a long time before
they eventually impact on the surface on earth, if they are discovered at all.
However, impacts which cause major damages don't happen very often, though
a few falls in this century could have caused much more damage if they had
impacted in more populated areas. Examples are the Sikhote-Aline-meteorite
shower, when approx. 100t of iron meteorites rained dowm in 1947, the
1.77t Jilin-meteorite (which missed the city of Jilin, China, only by a few
kilometers in the 1970's) and, of course, the Tunguska-event.

Don't worry, be happy, and keep looking UP|
  Herbert