Upon re-reading I see I half mis-understood the first quote. I thought the scientist was saying nothing hit the ground, but he was only addressing the cause of injuries (which now have been counted into over 1,000 people with - last I checked - 34 needing hospitalization.)
Also, we are lucky it came in at an angle and the atmosphere had time to break it up. Had it come straight down it may not have broken up, and - according to some - could have taken out that whole city of 1 million people.
There was no advance warning because of its positioning between the Earth and the Sun on approach.
I watched a documentary last night and some scientists from NASA were talking about a scenario just like this. They stated that even if one was coming that we saw there is nothing we could do about it.
If we had an even half-###’ed space program the last 20 years, by now we’d have the capability to spot from multiple locations, and the ability to hit something while it’s far enough away to be effective. It doesn’t actually take all that much to deflect one of these things “sufficiently” if it’s a couple weeks or more out. The bigger the asteroid or comet is, the harder it is to deflect, but the easier it is to detect further out, so even less angular deflection is needed.
Also, there is a stupid notion (given that a lot of these people are supposedly “scientists”), that blowing one up closer in results in an even worse rain of pieces upon us than if we leave it alone.
Wrong.
The smaller the pieces, the more they burn up in the atmosphere.
Toughest is probably a large “mushy” comet, as you may not be able to push on it without it coming apart. No problem though: Comets are easily spotted, so nuke it 2 months out, and almost all the pieces will have new trajectories that will easily miss the Earth.
“I watched a documentary last night and some scientists from NASA were talking about a scenario just like this. They stated that even if one was coming that we saw there is nothing we could do about it.”
What’s more likely is that if it very large, we can watch its orbit and figure out when it is coming at us, like they one yesterday. As to planetary defense. He’s right, there’s nothing we can do, since we don’t take it seriously.