I think the international community should be splitting the bill on this one.

NASA estimates that before entering the Earth's atmosphere above Russia, the asteroid measured 17 meters (56 feet) in diameter and weighed 10 tons.

No! 10000 tons. A ball of marshmellows 56 feet in diameter would weigh more than 10 tons

This account http://my.earthli...61b314c9 puts the explosive force at 500 kilotons. The people in the area where it struck are lucky it did not explode closer than it did. If it had, the damage could have been far worse.

I'm all in favor of early detection, however, I agree with Yelmurc in that this should be an international collaboration. A meteor that big is not discriminatory.

How ridiculous having to scrounge the amounts of dollars being discussed here when considering budgets allocated to war and religion.

What a depressing race the human race can be sometimes :-(

International efforts are all good and well, but America has a history of being self-serving. That being said, detection of possibly dangerous rogue asteroids should be at least as good as detection of incoming ICBM missiles from enemy sources. What does this say about America's readiness against a spontaneous attack by some rogue geopolitical entity? What does history teach us? And why do I keep thinking back on the fact that everybody is just in it for their paycheck, no matter where they work? Fact is, we all live from day to day, and it's a sad but certain thing that everything we read and hear we have learned to take with a grain of salt. Bomb shelters are useless after the fact.

From Terry Pratchett's "The Last Continent"

When gods get together they tell the story of one particular planet whose inhabitants watched, with mild interest, huge continent-wrecking slabs of ice slap into another world which was, in astronomical terms, right next door – and then did nothing about it because that sort of thing only happens in Outer Space. An intelligent species would at least have found someone to complain to. Anyway, no one seriously believes in that story, because a race quite that stupid would never even have discovered slood.*

* Much easier to discover than fire, and only slightly harder to discover than water.

(For the younger among us: This is a reference to Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacting on Jupiter in 1994)

@icuvd: A 17 meter diameter ball of water would weigh almost 2600 tons. The same volume of meringue might weigh in at 10 tons.

Don't you hate when the editors pool information from a variety of sources and don't check to make sure it's consistent?

knee jerk not needed for such a rare occurrence.

good game

Was its low angle able to allow it to burn up more before exploding ? it seemed reasonably low angle'd as it was going to impact.

There is little that could be done with such knowledge anyway. The only real solution is tempering all window glass.

Why even look? Welcome to extinction. There are several alternative methods that given sufficient warning time could be employed to deflect or otherwise mitigate a body. Yes, very mass dependent. But small delta Vs over long intervals can move a body thousands of Km. Not the forum for detailed discussion of near future alternatives but the ostrich strategy will eventually have a very bad outcome. Spend the next decade looking and the next decades thereafter studying NEOs is situ and the following decades experimenting with engineering strategies.

I rarely comment here but I must say the marshmallow comment is pretty much spot on... Although we can never be totally sure what exact specific gravity of that asteroid was I think some of the more accurate reports of 7, 000 metric tons is a very reasonable educated guess but if see that 10 ton value again I will just stop reading and move on!!! Marshmallows really good and well said!!!

More socialist fantasies. Any detection system will be payed for by the sucker of the world: the US taxpayer.

Who's to say NASA or some other agency didn't track. If they have classified equipment that tracked it, do you think they would divulge it?

NASA and all other government dependent organizations used to show-off their idiots in History Channel, Science Channel etc to tell people that they are tracking thousands of asteroids/meteorites. This catastrophe showed that they were doing nothing, but tracking PLANETS not to crash with the Earth.

The Russian government and Scientists are at fault for not detecting such a huge rock. I don't expect USA to do anything good, because the least good they could do is to leave the Middle East and pay for the oil just like the rest of us, let alone detect a rock destined to hit planet Earth.

We don't need any international effort of evil governments to protect us.

Corporations will do it. Just like they are doing it now.

And if you don't want to pay the user fee. Then that is ok. There will be no asteroid impact protection for you.

More socialist fantasies. Any detection system will be payed for by the sucker of the world: the US taxpayer.

Sucker? Leeches more like.
Stop your whingeing. You Yanks have been paying for everything with dud notes. The $US is going the way of all fiat money.

There are several alternative methods that given sufficient warning time could be employed to deflect or otherwise mitigate a body. Yes, very mass dependent.

The problem is also mass density.

- Will it break up under impact? Which pretty much negates impactors, since they'd just split off a part or, in the worst case, create a cloud that would just recollapse under its own gravity.

- Is it meltallic? Which pretty much negates nukes since they would just melt a bit of the surface - which then resolidifies and the whole thing ploughs on as before.

More socialist fantasies. Any detection system will be payed for by the sucker of the world: the US taxpayer.

And when a meteroite strikes they'll all come crying because the government didn't protect them. We know that spiel.

It's not a non-existing threat (unlike other non-existing threats...like 'russian/chinese invasion' on whose prevention are spent trillions upon trillions of dollars)

Who's to say NASA or some other agency didn't track. If they have classified equipment that tracked it, do you think they would divulge it?

Something that small that emits no light is harder to find than a needle in a haystack by many factors. If they knew they would obviously mention it - we need to learn to prepare for these things encase it is near a more populated area like New York.

Imagine sky scraper windows smashing....you wouldn't want to be walking along the side walks.

Sirchick you may very well have expertise in astronomy / astrophysics that I do not, but I can say from having worked in the defense industry that government technology is typically about 20 years ahead of civilian technology. If they could track with advanced technology, they would not obviously mention it.

Sirchick you may very well have expertise in astronomy / astrophysics that I do not, but I can say from having worked in the defense industry that government technology is typically about 20 years ahead of civilian technology. If they could track with advanced technology, they would not obviously mention it.

So what is the point of defence if when you find a threat you do nothing about it??

Less say you could track a small asteroid and predict the precise location of hit, and argue the temporary evacuation area was 2km by 2km im sure they would do it. They do it for hurricanes every year in southern USA.

Seems stupid might as well not bother tracking it if you track then then tell no one about an incoming hit.

They warn of old satellites coming into the atmosphere and track it with "reasonable" accuracy they ain't secret about those, so why would a piece of rock from space be more secretive? Makes no sense.

Seems stupid might as well not bother tracking it if you track then then tell no one about an incoming hit.

One capability at a time. Currently we'tre developing the ability to detect/track (that ability hasn't been around for too long). THEN, when we know what types of problems are out there, we start devising schemes to shield ourselves from potential hazards.

Currently we're just in the interim stage of being able to see but not being able to do something about it (which is the nastiest place to be, but one you must pas through in any case)

Seems stupid might as well not bother tracking it if you track then then tell no one about an incoming hit.

One capability at a time. Currently we'tre developing the ability to detect/track (that ability hasn't been around for too long). THEN, when we know what types of problems are out there, we start devising schemes to shield ourselves from potential hazards.

Currently we're just in the interim stage of being able to see but not being able to do something about it (which is the nastiest place to be, but one you must pas through in any case)

True but evacuating an area if we are able to calculate it is not a stretch to imagine...keeping it secret is in no ones interest even for department of defence.

There is little that could be done with such knowledge anyway. The only real solution is tempering all window glass.

I was wrong, they do have a method to destroy a meteor much higher in the atmosphere than where it exploded..

http://phys.org/n...sma.html