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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 102: Nov-Dec 1995 |
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Huge fireball explosion in 1994
This remarkable event was mentioned by C. Keay in his review of D. Steel's book Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets. It seems to have escaped or been ignored by the scientific press. We quote from Steel's book, in which he complains that such events get little publicity despite their ominous implications for the future of humanity.
"It is therefore not surprising that the 10-meter-or-so asteroid that blew up over a largely vacant area of the western Pacific on February 1, 1994, producing an explosion equivalent to at least ten times that of the Hiroshima bomb (and possibly rather more), was not seen prior to impact. Surveillance satellites registered it as the brightest such explosion that they have picked up so far. Despite the efforts of numerous scientists in this area of study to make the military aware that such detonations do occur naturally, it appears that the U.S. President was awakened because the Pentagon thought that this incident might be a hostile nuclear explosion."