Re: Meteor crashes in Russia; Injures hundreds
 

Supposedly it blew itself apart something like 15 miles up with the force of a small nuke, and that [the ice hole] is just the largest fragment they suspect.

Re: Meteor crashes in Russia; Injures hundreds
 

we havent had a meteor hit us in years though right? =/

Re: Meteor crashes in Russia; Injures hundreds
 

Space punches the Earth (its atmosphere anyway) pretty much everyday. What's rare is a (relatively) large one hitting the ground, and rarer still hitting a populated area.

Re: Meteor crashes in Russia; Injures hundreds
 

Most of the time we don't see them considering most of the planet has oceans and there are large swaths of land that aren't populated.

In the summer of 2010, my father and I actually saw a large asteroid, a near-miss, fly over the planet. I looked for reports on it and saw nothing. I even went on JPL's page to see if they knew anything to no avail. They gave me an answer along the lines of it being a satellite or something.

So it's not only down to the uninhabited areas, humans don't pay attention enough to space as it is.

Re: Meteor crashes in Russia; Injures hundreds
 

We don't keep an active watch of the skies. Which considering how little storage and processing power cost these days is absolutely INSANE if you ask me. (Not that anyone did but =p)

Re: Meteor crashes in Russia; Injures hundreds
 

Nem, how would you describe humans not watching the skies? :p

Re: Meteor crashes in Russia; Injures hundreds
 

The last significant impact was, coincidentally, also in Russia, known as the Tunguska Event that took place in June of 1908. It was much larger than this one, but it came down in an uninhabitated region of Russia. The first pictures of the event were taken nearly 20 years later in 1927, but it was clearly a powerful event as it destroyed the forest it landed in.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...d/Tunguska.png