In Ryan North and Carlos Gomez’s Fantastic Four #18, our heroes visit the impact site of what is believed to be a Tunguska-sized “asteroid” (please excuse the misnomer, it actually is) meant a meteorite). Local law enforcement is in disbelief: “A rock big enough to cause this much damage exists and no one saw it coming?” Johnny Storm admitted that the object was not discovered by astronomers, leading Reed Richards to the bizarre conclusion that the meteor must have been invisible.
But size isn’t the only thing that determines whether we can observe these objects as they move around Earth and our solar system. You also need to consider the object’s position relative to the sun, its angle of approach, and its speed of movement. In 2013, a meteorite estimated to be 65 feet wide exploded without warning over Chelyabinsk, Russia. In July 2019, a 328-foot asteroid surprised astronomers just days before passing between Earth and the moon. This object moves relatively slowly, making it difficult to detect with current methods.
The meteorite was first discovered in October 2008 before it hit Earth. The impact of the 10-foot-diameter asteroid was predicted to occur within 1 km of its final location and within 1.5 seconds of impact. Imagery resources such as Pan-STARRS and ATLAS track thousands of near-Earth objects (NEOs) but cannot monitor the entire sky. The European Space Agency’s NEOMIR mission, scheduled to launch in 2030, will search for a Chelyabinsk-sized meteorite in the region between Earth and the sun, and is sure to discover even more “invisible asteroids.”
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The Tunguska incident Mr. Reed referred to occurred on June 30, 1908 in a remote part of Siberia, so no one could have seen it coming. Similar to the Cheyravinsk incident, the Tunguska object exploded about nine miles above Earth’s surface, spurring all sorts of myths surrounding its origin, including ideas about black holes, antimatter, Nikola Tesla’s technology, and even aliens. I applied it.
The Tunguska object is currently estimated to have been about 130 feet in diameter and weighed about 220 million pounds. This event was observed as far away as Ireland and recorded on early seismic equipment. This sounds like a very large object, but it is also within the range of some of the most dangerous and difficult-to-see objects (65 to 450 feet).
Reid also explains that the dinosaurs never saw the deadly asteroid that hastened their extinction. We can’t know exactly what the animals that lived on Earth at that time saw, but there are some things we can calculate. The simple answer is that if dinosaurs on the right side of the Earth looked up at the sky during the three days before the Chicxulub impact, a space rock estimated to be 6.2 miles wide would come toward Earth as a glowing sphere. That means you must have seen it. Sky. Click here for a longer answer with formulas.
Carlos Gomez appears to have used actual photographs of the Tunguska crash site as a reference.
Since the beginning of our solar system, comets, asteroids, and meteoroids have collided with each other and the planets orbiting the sun. They have shaped landscapes, determined which species live and die, and terrorized humans with their unpredictable behavior and sometimes completely invisible presence. Before the 18th century, people did not believe that stones could easily fall from the sky. Early events were considered omens, objects sent by supernatural beings, and were often worshiped or used in spiritual rituals.
In the modern world, we can track large NEOs with some degree of accuracy and even predict their impact location on Earth. But we can’t see them all, so that’s what fuels our imagination.
AIPT Science is co-hosted by AIPT and New York City Skeptics.
