December 24, 2001

11:24 AM

Singing the holiday blues? Its quite a common affliction. Nothing like a collective brush with death however, to put stuff all back into the proper perspective.
posted by BentPenguin (5 comments total)

A friend of mine at NASA created this site. Jerry and his friend update it everyday, just for fun. The site has become one of NASA's most popular.
posted by Red58 at 11:56 AM on December 24, 2001

That's no asteroid! It's Santa!
posted by gramcracker at 3:09 PM on December 24, 2001

Definitely wouldn't like to have been under the asteroid that made Barringer Crater but my question is, where's the asteroid? Why isn't it sitting there like a cherry on top of a cake?
posted by Zootoon at 1:42 AM on December 25, 2001

Zoo, the kinetic energy of the asteroid got converted to heat energy on impact, and almost certainly the heat was sufficient to vaporize the asteroid as well as some of the surface soil it touched. "Vaporized" doesn't mean "gone," of course, and careful analysis of the soil at the impact site would probably provide information about the composition of the asteroid -- stony vs. nickel-iron, for example.
posted by alumshubby at 4:04 AM on December 25, 2001

Cheers alumshubby. Of course it would be nicer if it had stayed there but vapoize they must, it would seem.
posted by Zootoon at 4:56 PM on December 25, 2001