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I finally read the Wired article about the kid who got boinked by a meteorite. This was the most interesting bit:
A broad 1991 study of meteorite strikes on structures and near humans found that they are relatively common. The authors tabulated 69 strikes on human infrastructure since 1790, including 57 in the 20th century. They also counted 25 near misses of human beings.
It made me think of what Tom Taylor did with some NASA data on Near Earth Objects. He took this data and hooked it to a Twitter feed so that every time a rock passes near earth a Tweet is sent.
Imagine if regular data was kept on meteorite Earth impacts?
Every time a space rock knocks into the Earth a tweet would be sent with the location (longitude and latitude) and time of impact. You could plug that info into your GPS device and be the first on the scene when a giant robot emerges from a smoldering crater to annihilate the the world with his ray gun.
Now wouldn’t that be the ultimate first?
Photo Credit: NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, Barringer Meteorite Crater, near Winslow, Arizona.
