If a meteor falls in the ocean but no one hears it…

Meteoroid in Aerogel    (NASA/ESA photo)

Because few noticed the giant fireball that landed in the South Atlantic recently, it wasn’t considered to be a problem.

Nevertheless, Tech Times describes this flaming meteor as having the energy equivalent of “13,000 tons of TNT.”  This would make it the largest meteor impact here on Earth since the 2013 Chelyabinsk explosion.

So why wasn’t anyone listening?  More specifically, “why didn’t it create noise right after it happened?”  The answer is simple:  It takes two to tango.  And because the impact occurred some 1,000 kilometers off the coast of South America, there was no one around to tango with.

With no eyes and ears in the vicinity, how do we even know that it happened?  Military instrumentation is always clocking the time and direction of “explosions in the air for safety reasons.”  This information was then forwarded to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It turns out that “impacts like these aren’t unusual.”  They occur many times per year, but mostly in the oceans which cover 71 percent of Earth’s surface.   

Resources

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/136019/20160223/giant-fireball-falls-over-atlantic-but-almost-no-one-notices.htm 

Copyright February 26, 2016 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved