It may be discovered that bad things happen to this planet a lot more often than previous thought. The world dodged a bullet in 1908.
We only "dodged" it in the sense that the Tunguska event happened in a very remote area. Did you see the post on The Corner over at National Review Online about Tunguska? John Derbyshire posted the following:
Narrow Escape [John Derbyshire]
Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is of the impact site for the 1908 Tunguska meteor, "the most powerful natural explosion in recent Earth history." The meteor hit with a force of about 20 megatons, fortunately in a remote region of Siberia. Isaac Asimov pointed out that the latitude of the strike (60.96°N) was almost precisely that of St. Petersburg (59.93°N), so that if the meteor had arrived about 4hr 46m later, the second city of Imperial Russia would have been wiped out.
I, among others, wrote him a bit of a critique about his logic, pointing out that in 4 hours and 46 minutes the earth would have been over 300,000 miles out of place in it's orbit to have been hit by the tunguska impacter, but that in only about 2 minutes of Earth's movement in our orbit it might have been in line with St. Petersburg, if it have been moving in just the right direction in 3 dimensional space, but then so would lots of other places on Earth, given just the right movement.
He posted this follow up:
Everybody's a Critic [John Derbyshire]
An astronomical number of readers emailed in to observe, with asperity only slightly tempered by mere scorn, that (a) if the Tunguska object had arrived 4hr 46m later it would have missed the earth completely by over 300,000 miles, and (b) a degree of latitude is nearly 70 miles, so the inhabitants of St. Peterburg would have been in the position of Manhattanites watching a 20-megaton blast in Poughkeepsie.
Yeah, yeah. With no offense whatsoever to the fine people of Poughkeepsie, just hope you never find out. In any case, don't blame Asimov, I probably misquoted him.
I think we're beginning to realize that these things happen a lot and we just haven't been paying close enough attention.
“The world dodged a bullet in 1908.”
The world dodged a bullet last year, twice.
One was an asteroid which we had not ‘seen’ coming. It didn’t come close enough to warrant a big scare, but the problem was we didn’t ‘see’ it until it was almost ‘upon us.’
The second was not an asteroid or comet. It was a MCE from SUNSPOTS.
One of the SUNSPOTS gave off a MASS CORONAL EJECTION, swiftly sending RAYS toward the Earth. Most of the time this happens, the rays are a combination of different parts of the EM spectrum. This time it was dominated by X-RAYS.
x-Rays and about 100 times stronger than any previously recorded emissions from the sun.
The ‘beam’ just barely glanced off the side of the Earth, causing some disruption and damage to a few satellites.
I noticed that in the MSM, on the internet, that no one was even talking about it.
So, I asked someone who is a noted scientist, works for NASA, has many published scientific papers and books, and is highly regarded in the Astronomy field.
I asked him why the silence? What would have happened had the beam hit square on?
Would the areas in the direct line of fire be TOAST, FRENCH FRIES?
All he responded with was “yes”. There was no further discussion or explanation. I could see why.