The greatest threat of planetary extinction that we’re all not talking about

Lan Luu
lan.luu@codeenginestudio.com

July 4, 2015

June 30 is the 107th anniversary of the biggest asteroid strike on the Earth in recorded history.

In 1908, an asteroid measuring perhaps 90-190 meters across struck Siberia, damaging over 2,000 square kilometers of Russian forest – an area that measures larger than New York’s five boroughs. Scientists estimate that the energy of that explosion was about 1,000 times that of the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

This is far from the only close call that humans have had with asteroids. In 2004, an asteroid big enough to have its own small moon narrowly missed the planet. In 2013, an asteroid struck the Russia countryside with many times the force of the Hiroshima bomb, and was widely captured on video.

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Read more on Washington Post

Lan Luu
lan.luu@codeenginestudio.com