Mapping 20 Years of Major Meteor Impacts - CityLab
▻http://www.citylab.com/weather/2014/11/mapping-20-years-of-major-meteor-strikes/382872
Last February, a yacht-sized space rock ripped into the atmosphere above Russia and exploded, emitting an eardrum-wrecking shock wave that damaged more than 7,000 buildings and injured hundreds with flying glass.
For those who would prefer not to experience a sequel to the Chelyabinsk incident, is there anywhere they can seek safety from galactic bombardment?
It doesn’t seem like it, to judge from this new NASA map of space debris smashing into our celestial dome. The color-coded cartography shows the global penetration of at least 556 “small asteroids” from 1994 to 2013—"small" being deceiving here, as these fiery “bolides” lie on the larger end of the meteor spectrum, often producing superbright flashes and percussive booms. What’s clear is that the distribution of extra-large meteorites is random, affecting every ocean and continent (the fewer-seeming meteors around the poles is actually a result of map distortion).
cc @fil !!!