You may have heard that NASA announced over the weekend at a conference that a large meteor exploded in the upper atmosphere over the Bering Sea on December 18th, 2018, which had gone unnoticed due to the location of entry. Quick to capitalize on that story, CNN rushed to report it, and like the meteor, bombed in the process.
Here’s the headline:
And here is the text of the report, note the highlight:
Umm, riiight. I didn’t even have to look it up to know that the Hiroshima bomb (Little Boy) had a 15 kiloton yield, but it’s right there in Wikipedia had the author bothered to check facts first.
Let’s see, a 4.2 kiloton meteor explosion in the atmosphere, vs. the 15 kiloton Hiroshima bomb.
For the math challenged, like CNN writer AJ Willingham here’s how that works out:
15 kilotons/4.2kilotons = 3.57 times SMALLER than the Hiroshima Bomb.
Yet somehow, CNN thinks the meteor was 10 times stronger, or with a yield of 15 kilotons x 10=150 kilotons. Nope, not no way, not no how.
CNN > FAIL.
UPDATED: Meanwhile, here’s a GIF photo sequence of the event, captured by Simon Proud:
https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/profiles/proud/him8-meteor-44706.gif
h/t to Dave Heider
UPDATE: CNN finally got around to updating the story and noting a correction at 1:58 AM ET, Tue March 19, 2019 :
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the fireball had an impact energy of 173 kilotons.
As Robert Kernodle posted, NASA gives the “calculated total impact energy” as 173 kt, see event at 2018-12-18 23:48:20 here (which is linked to from the CNN article): https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/. So yes, the 10x (actually more) Hiroshima is correct; the 4.2kt is what’s wrong. The erroneous figure appears to come from (what is currently) the second row of that table, a 4.2k energy meteor. I’m guessing that the mistake was caused because the date on that second row is
2019-02-18
which is easy enough to mistake for the correct date
2018-12-18
Also, the explosion altitude of the Feb 18 meteor and that of the Dec 18 meteor are virtually identical, which could have caused confusion: 26km and 25.6 km (the article says 16 miles, which is properly rounded off from either of these figures). The Lat/Long of the two events is of course quite different.
CNN must have sacked all the sub editors.
In Canada, this wholesale innumeracy is compounded by the problems of converting Imperial units of measurement to metric. Journalists routinely miscalculate – despite the simplicity of doing so using the internet. Not only that, they often give the equivalent to silly degrees of precision, like, oh no! that drone was 91.44 metres from the cockpit as we were coming in for a landing! Not only that, they forget that in some subjects, like construction and aviation, imperial units are still used, globally in the latter. Moreover, reporting volumes in litres makes oil spills sound much more devastating than they really are, such as the 250,000 litre pipeline leak near North Battleford in Saskatchewan in 2016. This equates to two railroad tankers, just a bit more than 1500 barrels. Not the environmental disaster as was trumpeted by so many who tried to make hay with it. And then we have bizarre made-up metrics, like such-and-such green energy initiative will be the equivalent of taking X number of vehicles off the road – notwithstanding that different websites give differing figures. My friends, we have a long row to hoe.
Is a “kiloton TNT equivalent” metric? It sounds more imperial. Or military.
It’s the metric ton – 1,000 kilograms. I wish they would use the proper term, “megagram.” I once had occasion to compare metals production figures between the US and various MKS countries, and didn’t realize I’d bollixed it up by forgetting to convert to common units until the professor called me on it. (I was close, but still wrong, as the metric ton is about 98% of the Imperial / long ton.)
I’m sorry, but you have pushed my “scientific grammar nazi” button
“15 kilotons/4.2kilotons = 3.57 times SMALLER than the Hiroshima Bomb.”
There is no such thing as 3.57 times smaller. Something that is one times smaller, by definition, is zero size. technically, something that is 3.57 times smaller is -2.57 times the original size.
What you mean is that it is 0.28 of the original size, or 28% if you prefer, or you could even say “roughly a third”
Let’s just go totally bonkers and call it
28011204481792717086834733893557/10000000000000000000000000000000th
the size of the Hiroshima Bomb’s TNT-equivalent yield.
Let’s all just go totally bonkers! Without math altogether!
ha ha he he ho ho
“15 kilotons/4.2kilotons = 3.57 times SMALLER than the Hiroshima Bomb.”
Hey if you are going to be pedantic about these sorts of misrepresentations, stop saying something is “3.57 times smaller”. Be scientific, be mathematical, drop the hick edition.
A thing can be 3 times larger than another thing, but it cannot be 3 times smaller. That would be “one third the size”. “Three times” already implies it is larger. If I earn $1000 and you earn “three times…” it means what follows is going to be larger, not smaller. Times means multiplied by.
Maybe CNN meant it was 1/10th the size. That is also wrong of course – nearly everything they asserted as fact was incorrect except the part about it being a meteor.
Maybe they wished it was ten times larger so they could rave more. Maybe they used a climate model to generate the number. After all, in a climate model, the reality of 15 can be stretched to include 150 at two sigma. CNN gives new meaning to “standard” and “deviation”. The lower the standard, the more the deviation. After all, the only difference between 15 and 150 is a big fat zero, which is to say, nothing at all. That means they are the same.
🙂 beat you by 4 minutes!
Was Napolean shorter than a pig is fat?
The idea that Napoleon was very short is a myth. Napoleon was approximately 5’6’’ or 5’7”. The average French man of his era (or British) was only 5’5”. The myth is a result of differences in French measurements (5’2” inches in France was approximately 5’6” or 5’7”. And iirc, also was use as a propaganda tool by the Brits to insult and inflame Napolean.
Robert,
While you are correct about Napoleon’s measurements the fact is that everyone who met him described him as ‘short’ or ‘petit taille’ . The people around him, being military and/or aristocratic, were probably taller than the average.
Anyone care to guess how much energy is within the weather system (clouds) that are the companion to that little orange blip?
If I recall correctly, the “average” cyclonic system releases between ten and fifteen tons TNT energy equivalent – per second. So over a day, that’s something between 850 kilotons and a megaton?
Of course, a “good” hurricane has enough energy that it generates gamma ray bursts. Those critters are multi-megaton deals.
Tipping point meteorite strikes earth due to climate change : CNN.
Here is one from MSN that implies the “over 10X” claim comes from NASA.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/science/nasa-meteor-explosion-10-times-size-of-nuclear-bomb-detected-report/vi-BBUV7ms?ocid=spartanntp
It seems nobody actually checks the facts before they post “news” stories.
Read back through some of the earlier posts here (including mine). The 10x figure is correct, it was the 4.2kt that was wrong. And NASA did not make the 4.2kt mistake, someone else did–likely CNN, with some other sources repeating that error.
I wonder what the energy comparison would be between Little Boy and the most deadly air raid in history which occurred March 9th, 1945 when 324 B-29s dropping incendiaries from low altitude in the darkness burned out 16 square miles of Tokyo and killing about 100,000 (The Japanese official claim was about 80,000) and leaving about 1 million homeless. Hurricane force winds and the water in canals boiled and many in bomb shelters died of Asphyxia.
Please remove the Himawari image, you are using it without credit.
John McCarthy said ” He/she who does not do arithmetic is doomed to talk rubbish”. The truth of this statement is shown every day by the media.
Theres a difference between Kilotons weight and Kilotons TNT! But even a journalist should know.
Off the thread, somewhat, but you might find this of interest. It illustrates the failings of the media.
The lickspittle media often uses the bombing of Hiroshima as a measurement of energy. They do it deliberately to pin some horrible crime on the American people. The “American people” never voted on it. The media never mentions “the equivalent of the atomic bomb that Democrat President Harry Truman ordered dropped on Hiroshima.” Harry did it all by himself with his pen and his phone just like Obama. As did Democrat President FDR, who used this phone and his pen to order the Americans of Japanese ancestry put in concentration camps.
I think that Truman did the correct thing and, in the long run, saved Japanese and American lives. The lickspittle media cannot conceive of a culture that would rather have their children fight in combat with bamboo spears than surrender. (That is what they were training to do.) He gave the Japanese an excuse to surrender. FDR? Not so much.
It has been said that Truman did it just to scare the Soviets. If so, thank God it worked!
Nobody knows what Stalin was thinking for sure, but….. If you will recall, the Soviets (and their veto) were boycotting the United Nations when Communist NorK invaded South Korea. President Harry Truman got the United Nations to come to the defense of South Korea. Curious. Connecting the dots, it seems that Stalin authorized the invasion of South Korea to get the non-Communist world involved in a land war in Asia. In the meantime, he was preparing for WW3 with plans to invade and subjugate all of Europe including Spain and Italy. Stalin already had the army from WW2, while Harry Truman had pretty well gutted the American military.
But more, Stalin was in the midst of creating the “doctor’s plot”. He was doing the groundwork to recreate the Terror of the 30s. The plot was going to be an alleged conspiracy of Jewish doctors who were plotting to assassinate the Soviet leadership. Stalin had already expanded the death camps for every Jew in Europe. During the Terror of the 30s, Stalin murdered most anybody. For example, Kruschev was the secretary of the Ukraine Communist Party. He was given a quota of party members to kill. Thousands. Not a list of names, only a number. The Terror of the 30s also saw any number of high Communist leaders put on a ‘show trial” and shot as “Enemies of the State”. After they “confessed”, of course.
Also of interest during this period was the “Holodormor” in Ukraine. (Important-look it up if you don’t know about it.) Ordered by Stalin and implemented by Kruschev.
Stalin died before his plans could be realized. Both Kruschev and Beria (head of the NKVD, were there when Stalin died. Descriptions of his death indicate poisoning with waffrin, i.e. rat poison. It would have been a wise thing for someone in their place to do. Faced with the Terror which could very well sweep them up and nuclear war with these United States, it was about the only option left to “reasonable men”.
Since I am on the subject….. My father was the executive officer for the United Nations Command in South Korea in about 1956. One story he told me was that during the Armistice talks, the ChiComs demanded the return of Chinese POWs in South Korean POW camps. The South Korean President Syngman Rhee just let all of them go. I wondered about that. Why would you let an enemy army loose in your country well behind the lines? The ChiCom soldiers in Korea were the remnants of the Nationalists Chinese army that surrendered in 1949. Mao didn’t trust them and wanted to kill them all. Hence the “human wave” tactics. The only thing that waited for them at home was death.
So far there is no protection from these rocks hitting anywhere on earth. Maybe the presidents Space Command will work on that. As for me I have other things to think about until one hits near me.
Convert “kilotons TNT” to energy at about 4.2E12 Joules
Convert “twinkie” energy at about 600 kilojoules per twinkie of 40 grams, that’s point six MJ.
So, 1kT nuclear energy of 4.2E6 MJ equals the energy of 7 million twinkies.
That makes the Hiroshima bomb equal to 15×7 = 105 Megatwinkies
The energy of the December 2018 meteor comes to 1211 megatwinkies, or 1.2 gigatwinkies
Using the 2E19 Joules per day for a “typical” hurricane from the how stuff works site,
The conversion comes to 86E12 twinkies per day, or 86000 gigatwinkies per day, or 86 Teratwinkies/day
The teratwinky is the best unit of measure since the wadham (I million sq.Km of ice), after the researcher who called that amount as almost vanished
We seem to be conflating two meteors here:
December 18, 2018: The fireball tore across the sky off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula on 18 December and released energy equivalent to 173 kilotons of TNT.
July 25th, 2019: “A fireball that streaked across the sky above the Thule Air Base in Greenland on July 25 was notable for not only the 2.1 kilotons of energy it released — the second-most-energetic “explosion” of its kind recorded this year …”
Yes, as some have pointed out (myself included) in posts above, they were conflating two meteors. But I’m curious about this 25 July 2019 meteor. If you’re correct about this, you should go to work earning a living making predictions!
(2019 –> 2018)
I made a prediction once. Bluffing in poker, I said I had a full house. (Yes, you can say things like that. The other players may or may not believe you. We were young and foolish.) I then asked for two cards, which were duly given to me. There were quiet snickers, and people courageously bet against me. But when it came time to show the hand, behold, I laid down a full house and took the pot.
Now about that meteor — what’s the ante?
CNN confused the months….
2018-12-18 174Kt
2019- 2- 18 4.2Kt
see https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/
A mistake any semi-numerate, geographically challenged, undisciplined reporter could make…
The 4.2Kt job was over western Zambia not the Bering Sea.
Meanwhile, the 10x fireball was barely noticeable over the cyclone that is capable of releasing the energy of 10,000 Hiroshima bombs.
But I digress….
Meanwhile, the 10x fireball was barely noticeable over the cyclone that is capable of releasing the energy of 10,000 Hiroshima bombs.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Hurricanes
But I digress….
By the way “impact energy” seems an odd term for a meteorite that explodes high in the atmosphere and never impacts.
Journalism is a field you take when you have no skills to be a real scientist so you are left to report what scientists say and, really don’t understand what they are saying.
Actually the impact yield may well have been only 4.2kt… you have to remember that impact is NOT explosion force. So an object that produces a 140kt expansion/explosion force could easily only have a 4.2kt impact force if it were to strike the ground. Remember that a “1mt” fusion weapon detonated in space only produces about 60kt of “force” in a vacuum. The common parlance is “kt/mt *in atmosphere*” and even the Hiroshima weapon produced a significantly different final explosive force when dropped from a plane vs exploded on a tower.
4.2kt a pretty significant amount of impact force tbh but not super dangerous. Basically if the object had struck ground it would have struck with the force of 8.4 million pounds of TNT. If it struck a ginormous water tower and instantly vaporized the contents it would produce the ~140kt rating but as it is the poor thing mostly just burned up in atmo.
The ~140kt explosive force is from the superheating and in my experience is always overestimated because it is based off luminosity in the image – an unreliable measurement.
‘Hiroshima bombs’ is a standard unit of measure.