Posts

Showing posts with the label Cosmic Thunder

A Sound Of Cosmic Thunder: Earth-Impacting Asteroid Heard By Nuke Detectors (Video)

Image
( N.Morgan ) January 2nd, an asteroid blew up in earth's atmosphere. It was a harmless event, however there were cosmic sounds captured, by Infrasound detector,which are used to hear nuclear bomb  detonations. A quick background : The asteroid, 2014 AA, was first seen just a day before impact and was actually the first asteroid discovered in 2014. It was detected by the Mount Lemmon Survey asteroid search program and was quickly determined to have a short life ahead of it: It was due to impact the Earth in less than a day. This was only the second time an asteroid was discovered before it hit us; the first was 2008 TC3 , which came in over Sudan and rained down small rocks over the desert (I have to add that years later I was able to hold a piece of that rock in my hand, and it was an eerie feeling). Careful measurements of its orbit predicted an impact over the Atlantic, but the addition of the infrasound detectors nailed it. The principle there is actually pretty n...