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Fair enough, but those are all relatively small, and detected only hours before impact, their effect would not be such that anything major would happen on the surface of the planet beyond some broken windows and maybe a sunburn.

Anything that size aimed straight down would most likely not reach the ground but burn up in the atmosphere and any remaining bits would just fall at regular terminal velocity.

But from 10 meters and up things change and the Chelyabinsk meteor is remarkable in that it (1) was large enough to have been detected but wasn't and (2) struck while we were apparently focused on one that was more visible but that ultimately missed us. We were very lucky that it impacted where and at the angle that it did, otherwise the airburst might have happened far closer to the ground or to might have impacted directly over much more populated territory. That would have been very bad news.

It doesn't matter how many 1 through 5 meter objects we can track because we have the atmosphere to protected us from the worst of these if we miss the 20 meter ones (or apparently even much larger) that travel at speeds high enough to give their relatively modest mass tremendous energy and for which the atmosphere does not give sufficient (or even any) protection.




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