Summary
A 27-inch asteroid, C0WEPC5, entered Earth’s atmosphere over Siberia on Tuesday, creating a harmless but visible fireball.
This marked Earth’s fourth detected asteroid strike of the year and only the 11th “imminent impactor” ever recorded.
The asteroid was detected by the Kitt Peak National Observatory ahead of impact, showcasing advancements in asteroid detection.
Separately, a larger asteroid, 2020 XR, measuring 1,200 feet in diameter, will safely pass Earth on Wednesday at a distance of 1.37 million miles.
There’s a not so great book called The Killing Star, where aliens that are never described in the book decide for an unknown reason that we need to be destroyed, so they just hurl as many asteroids as they can at our solar system. It worked pretty well.
Not a bad “low-tech” way to destroy a rival civilization in another solar system. A good idea in an otherwise disappointing book.
You might enjoy a similar plotline in the excellent Bobiverse book series. (I don’t think it shows up until the second or maybe even third book, so don’t go in expecting that immediately.)
Seconding this. Excellent hard science series that spends equal time on both being a nerd and being nerdy.
Just glancing at what those books are about, they sound fun and I’ll check them out, thanks. In the case of The Killing Star, that was the plot point that attracted me to it, but the execution was clumsy and the ending was not exactly a cliffhanger, but it didn’t feel like a resolution either.
When I was done reading it, my dog decided it needed to be chewed up. It was the only time she ever chewed up a book. I guess she felt even more strongly about it than I did.
Yeah, I know that kind of book you mean. It’s not a popular opinion, but I felt similarly about Annihilation (though I only read the first book of the series, so maybe things would have improved later).