Asteroid explosion over Indonesia

An asteroid explodes with the force of two or three Hiroshima bombs and what are the politicians and protesters shouting about? A pitiful 380 ppm Carbon Dioxide.
What annoys me is only hearing about the detonation 19 days later. Could have been worse I suppose, it could have explodeded locally.

A random human has a 1 in 25000 chance of their death being by asteroid. I like them odds.

Maybe if someone studied the carbon footprint of the explosion it would make the news???

Wish there was some tracking on this…
I have been attracted to Comet 2P/Encke and the Taurid complex on several occasions.
“Some consider the Bronze Age breakup of an originally larger comet of which Comet Encke is a member to be responsible for ancient destruction in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps evidenced by a large (unconfirmed) meteorite crater in Iraq identified as Umm al Biinni lake.[2] The origin of the swastika has also been connected with Comet Encke. It has also been suggested that the object likely to have been responsible for the Tunguska event in 1908 was a fragment of Comet Encke.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Encke
“The Taurids are an annual meteor shower associated with the comet Encke.”
“Encke and the Taurids are believed to be remnants of a much larger comet, which has disintegrated over the past 20,000 to 30,000 years,”
“In total, this stream of matter is the largest in the inner solar system. Due to the stream’s size, the Earth takes several weeks to pass through it, causing an extended period of meteor activity, compared with the much smaller periods of activity in other showers. ”
“The Taurid stream has a cycle of activity that peaks roughly every 2500 to 3000 years, when its core passes nearer to Earth and produces more intense showers. In fact, because of the separate “branches” (night-time in one part of the year and daytime in another; and Northern/Southern in each case) there are two (possibly overlapping) peaks separated by a few centuries, every 3000 years. Some astronomers note that dates for megalith structures such as Stonehenge are associated with these peaks.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Taurids
“The Taurid Complex, related to Comet 2P/Encke, is a massive stream of material in the inner solar system”
“while the orbits of some particles are quite dispersed, it is still likely that the Taurid stream has a narrow and dense core consisting of particles concentrated near the orbit of the stream’s parent object, which is presumably related to Comet 2P/Encke. As the orbits of the material constituting this narrow, dense core have been subject to perturbations over thousands of years, it may be inferred that intense bombardment episodes have resulted at epochs when the material reaches Earth intersection”
(the broader darker line of orbit designates above or below the ecliptic plane, opposite for the thinner line)
[attachment=1]north taurids.png[/attachment]
[attachment=0]south taurids.png[/attachment]
“action of a mean motion resonance with Jupiter can produce structure in a meteoroid stream, concentrating meteoroids in a dense swarm. More specifically, predictions tabulated by Asher & Clube of enhanced meteor and fireball activity from a Taurid Complex swarm in the 7:2 resonance are compared with observational data collected in Japan over several decades. This allows increased confidence in the Taurid swarm theory, and more generally could mean that resonant trapping is a dynamical mechanism affecting a significant amount of meteoroidal material in the inner Solar system. ”
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1998MNRAS.297…23A&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_VIEW&classic=YES
“We show that a statistically significant number of Earth-crossing asteroids are part of the Taurid Complex of interplanetary objects”
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1993MNRAS.264…93A&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_VIEW&classic=YES
“It is shown that the giant comet breakup hypothesis has a clear basis in astronomical fact”
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1987MNRAS.225P..55C&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_VIEW&classic=YES
“Recent astronomical data are employed to make a detailed analysis of periodic terrestrial bombardment by molecular cloud debris during revolution around the Galaxy. Passage through the Gould Belt 3-6 Myr ago would have resulted in glaciation, geomagnetic reversals, and extinction events, all of which have left evidence. The break up of large comets in the solar system after passage through the Belt would produce a large dust and meteor input to the atmosphere, causing a rise of up to 1 percent of C-14 in the atmosphere. The level would be sufficiently high to affect a full climatic cycle. Some glaciation could also occur, and the last Ice Age could have been caused by the progenitor of comet Encke, part of which was the Tunguska meteorite, an interstellar object. It is estimated that further debris from the zodiacal cloud will intersect earth during the period 2000-2400 AD.”
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1984MNRAS.211..953C&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_VIEW&classic=YES
From this information we can deduce the following:
a. there is a system of asteroids/cometary debris that intersects earths’ orbit periodically
b. the streams intersect each other at the point of earth orbit intersection
c. the streams have large, dense objects, concentrated in a stream core
d. the earth intersects these ‘cores’ about every 3000 years, and we are due about now
e. it may take two weeks for the earth to pass through the stream core
therefore, we can surmise that a catastrophic, extinction level event ‘could’ occur every 3000 years approximately….
this event would be a constant bombardment by many asteroids and cometary impacts at 65,000 MPH (not including earths velocity) lasting about two weeks in duration, giving all corners of the globe the destruction required to eliminate civilizations on a macro scale…..
this is a justifiable hypothesis, so far….

Astronomy is a field in which amateurs can provide useful data if they have a decent telescope.

In 1908 a meteorite exploded above Tunguska, it was larger than this one in Indonesia, about a 100 meters and it exploded with an estimated yield of 10-15 megatons, that is the size of large nuclear weapon. A forrested area of about 2100 square km was leveled and the explosion measured 5 on the Richter scale. That is good enough to destroy a large city if it was in the right place.
The list of incidents since that june day in 1908 is long. With the explosion over Indonesia being the largest since 1908. And they could be mistaken for nuclear explosion, its what happend in 1979 when a Vela satellite detected a small nuclear explosion, or so they thought since no radioactive fallout was found.
With several countries around the world trying to obtain nuclear weapons or already having them the chance that we would make that same mistake again is rather high and therefore the risk of smaller or larger nuclear exchange of weapons is also a possible thing that could happen in the near future.
Nuclear weapons and meteorites are real, they are not some output of a model.

To add… the entire premise is that the Taurid Complex was once a large body…and the assumption of it’s demise ‘about’ 20,000 years ago…..leaving a tremendous amount of large and small debris….which is now concentrated in a narrow, dense, core….
the earlier ‘passes’ were readily noticeable and destruction was periodic….therefore, the ‘planet/comet’ WAS there, which would account for the ancient ‘myths/tales’…..
there are several different avenues of thought and research on the ‘comet stream’….different timelines of intersection, things like that….one researcher says every 2000 years, another says we intersect every 3000 years, etc….
“Therefore, although the Taurid stream is very broad, at the core of the stream we expect a concentration of meteoroids and cometary fragments, including objects of Tunguska size. As a result of Jupiter’s gravity, the orbit of this central concentration changes over thousands of years, sometimes being brought into intersection with the Earth’s orbit (Figure 1). That is, in 3 dimensions, the central concentration usually misses the Earth’s orbit, but there will be times when it intersects the Earth’s orbit. At these times, the impact frequency on the Earth is much higher. Assuming the parent object is closely related to Comet Encke, it seems that the last intersections were around AD 300 to 500, and before that somewhat earlier than 2000 BC (Figure 1), although there is some uncertainty in these calculations. The most recent intersections may have been a couple of centuries earlier, and the intersections before that could have been as early as 3000 BC. Despite the uncertainty, the calculations always show that there are `dangerous times’ lasting a couple of centuries, when there is a greatly increased impact frequency, followed by a few thousand years when the Earth’s orbit is not intersected by the Taurid core. The next intersection in the future will be around AD 3000”
http://www.perigeezero.org/treatise/timeline/index.html
the above site suggests the rise in sea level and ice ages were caused by intersections with the meteor/asteroid stream, as well as the destruction of civilizations….due to the ice composition of the huge comet that broke up and rained on earth…
I’ve seen ‘expected’ intersection dates of 2000 AD to 3000AD….so, they don’t really know exactly where the dense core stream is, and are not sure if it drifts up and down or not, which would change intersection dates greatly….
“Theoretical radiants for macroscopic Taurid objects are then presented and compared with observations of the nighttime and daytime Taurid meteor showers. These are found to be broadly similar in form, given the sparsity of some of the data, adding weight to the hypothesis that this sub-jovian complex contains kilometre-plus asteroids. ”
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995EM&P…68..155A
the debris is large enough, in sufficient quantity, appears periodic in nature, is relative to the ancient myths/tales/prophecies, and fits some of the timelines for previous abrupt climate change and near extinction events….
plus, the astrophysicists and astronomers aren’t sure when we would intersect, as they are only now figuring out that it does exist, and why it does….

Did I read that Correctly? 10 METERS WIDE?! Good god, if that did impact, that would of heavily damaged a small city. Ok, perhaps this should be a wake up call to the government to stop worrying about climate change and start worrying about NEO’s.

Robert van der Veeke (22:29:47) :
“The list of incidents since that june day in 1908 is long. With the explosion over Indonesia being the largest since 1908. And they could be mistaken for nuclear explosion, its what happend in 1979 when a Vela satellite detected a small nuclear explosion, or so they thought since no radioactive fallout was found.”
I seem to recall something similar at around the same time. Weren’t the colonials up in arms about suspected high altitude thermo-nuclear explosions being detected by their satellites, they checked with us good old Brits but our defence chaps had heard nothing. I believe it did make the news at the time, but of course that was when the BBC was a reliable, impartial, professional news gathering & reporting organisation, beholden to no one. A few commentators at the time suggested the Americans needed to check their equipment, under the friendly rivalry of who has the best kit. However there was a good quality BBC Horizon (science & I have said this before ;-)) prog on it around 12+ years ago, which noted this occurrence where US satellites detected what appeared to be sizable upper atmospheric explosions which quite naturally suggested that they may be under attack, but which also high-lighted the regular nature of these NEO hitting the atmosphere. It also high-lighted the checks & balances in place for western powers as opposed to anti-nuclear campaigners always complaining that the US could & would launch a first strike out of hand. Now of course we have today’s politically correct version of armageddon group hug theory, so that WAGTD, poor, as a result of man’s folly! Nothing personal but one can take this group hugging theory a bit too far. At least I hear our “Beautiful Leader” is meeting his European counter parts to discuss this further. (I am also alarmed to hear that “European Union” warships are out on patrol somewhere, last I heard we still had the Royal Navy, oh well ho hum.)

Real news, no coverage. What a surprise. If that thing would have hit Lindsay Lohan, then it would have been covered, ad nauseam.

I guess that was a real Bone shaker.
Improving our observing capabilities sounds like a much better use of public money than sending 20,000 people to Copenhagen for some xmas shopping. Presumably this was missed on the way in because current observing systems focus on known or assumed high risk areas of space?