[DBrow]

See my 66 and 62. We get pounded frequently with rocks and chunks of ice (mixed with dust). Some are big enough to go BOOM when they hit, and most of these explosions are way way up in the air- all we get down here is the boom and a flash. Use Clusty to look up bolide and meteorite and similar topics.

Nobody is saying these bolides cause any damage- they are comparing the energy released (kinetic energy transferred from the incoming bolide to the atmosphere) to something us humans are in awe of, nukes. If they said "the energy transferred was almost two million joules" few would understand and nobody would be impressed. But comparing it to one of the smallest atomic explosions makes a reference point people can grasp. If one of these bolides reached a city and then broke up you'd see damage, like in Tunguska where trees were flattened for miles, all pointing out from the blast center.

In an earlier post I said that we actually exploded nukes in space- Starfish Prime went off in near space someplace north of the Johnson Islands. It went off with the force of FIVE Hiroshima bombs, yet neither the Johnsons nor Hawaii took any damage. It's just that, that's how much energy was released. Look up Starfish Prime.

[Nathan Zachary]

So it DIDN'T hit the earth then. It burned up like most of them do. That's nothing new. You can see those every night, and sometimes a larger one that puts on a good show for a couple seconds. Then again I live in a northern State and out in the country and can acually SEE the stars clearly. I keep forgetting that this is something city dwellers seldom if ever see.

[Always Independent]

There was a movie about atomic weapons that ran film scenes of a number of the high near space detonations.