A Brief History
On June 6, 2002, high above the Mediterranean Sea, an asteroid estimated at about 10 meters in diameter exploded in the upper atmosphere with a similar effect to a 26 kiloton nuclear bomb, a larger blast than either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs. What is really scary is that scientists failed to detect the approach of this chunk of space stuff and there would have been no warning had it hit the surface of the Earth!
Digging Deeper
Known as “The 2002 Eastern Mediterranean event,” another scary “what if” scenario involved the tense military stand-off happening between India and Pakistan at the time. Had the errant asteroid detonated above or between those countries, it is highly possible a nuclear war could have been triggered!
We at HistoryandHeadlines fervently hope the astronomers and scientists keep a close eye on heavenly bodies so that we are not surprised in the future like we were in 2002.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Burrows, William. The Asteroid Threat: Defending Our Planet from Deadly Near-Earth Objects. Prometheus, 2014.
Russell, C.T., editor. The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission. Springer, 2012.
The featured image in this article, a map by Nzeemin, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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