Makes you wonder ...
Low transparency....
What are they supposed to say about it?
It’s not like anyone did it on purpose or they had any way to stop it.
IBTWHG
They don’t want the Russians to know they weren’t watching.
Seems a more likely scenario than some others.
My math may be wrong, but at that speed the object should have weighed around 14 tons to release that much energy.
There was probably nothing to report. A dent in the ground is not exactly newsworthy.
Headline makes it sound enormous.
It did no damage and there was nothing to report.
Publicly reporting meteors does not come under any of the duties assigned to the US Air Force.
The “AIR” Force is not in charge of outer space. Why the implication that the USAF is somehow “hiding” something?
Actually, I’m sure the base was as surprised as anyone. They’re not the ones with the super powered telescopes, charged with monitoring the heavens for anything other than enemy planes and missiles.
As common meteorites sell for $2 or $3 a gram, that could be a small fortune. Shhhh!
It is all really very simple. The Air Force probably never even detected it.
Want to worry about something seriously to worry about?— a repeat of the Chicxulub comet/asteroid. A Comet/Asteroid which struck the Earth 66 million years ago, whose crater has been identified along the Yucatan Peninsula. The comet/asteroid was 9 miles in diameter and the impact is confirmed to coincide exactly with the Cretacous-Palogene Extinction event (which featured most notably the immediate extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs all over the world). The evidence of the comet/asteroid impact is identified all over the world as well- for example erosion exposing the Iridium/clay layer out in the Badlands (a long way from Yucatan and the Danish Zealand Island. The crater is called the Chicxulub, The net result was extended multiyear winter everywhere— killing plants and animals. And this was only the second largest impact ever discovered to date. There’s another one that is larger!
Here’s the wiki page for the Crater:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
And here’s the one for the Cretaceous Palogene event
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event
So a 2.1 kT impact is no big deal, and neither was the 440 kT one that hit Russia in Feb. 2013. The Chicxulub meteor hit with a force calculated at 100 trillion tons of TNT-ie. beyond our comprehension.
A map of the biggest impacts as far as is known— and enjoy worrying. LOL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth
Didn’t the Chinese say they planned to bring some to Earth ?
That is pretty good size.
Is the earth under meteoric bombardment?
Nice headline. A 2 kiloton rock would destroy most of the planet.
A 2.1 kiloton explosion would not make much of a dent.
There is a BIG difference.
As it is with things like these impacts there by the time they can figure out an area of impact there is no time to warn anybody, and the Air Force does not have the ability to just interrupt local TV and radio broadcasts to even give a warning.