A NASA analysis has come to this conclusion

Oct 30, 2009 06:28 GMT  ·  By

According to experts at the American space agency, it may be that the space rock that exploded over Indonesia earlier this month is the largest to have hit the Earth since 1994. The asteroid did not exactly hit the surface, but rather exploded in the atmosphere, far away enough to not cause any damage or casualties. Based on the strength of the explosion that took place when the rock disintegrated in the atmosphere, experts estimate that it must have been at least 30 feet (ten meters) in diameter.

“My understanding is that this may have been the largest object to strike the Earth since the fireball near the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific on February 1, 1994. Although the Indonesian object was large and the resulting atmospheric explosion may have been the equivalent of several Hiroshima bombs, it is not unexpected for our planet to be hit every decade or so by such an object,” planetary scientist Clark Chapman says. The expert is also a noted specialist in asteroids at the Boulder, Colorado-based Southwest Research Institute (SwRI).

Preliminary investigations have revealed that the atmospheric blast may have been the equivalent of one larger than 50 kilotons, which roughly equals the power of 110,000 pounds of TNT going off at the same time. Don Yeomans, Paul Chodas, Steve Chesley, all experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Near-Earth Object Program Office, in Pasadena, California, add that Indonesian TV footage clearly shows the traces left behind by the object. Plumes of dust are visible in the day sky, as the impact took place at about 11 am local time, on October 8.

“We are trying to coordinate with some local scientists to secure more local data, but that will likely take several weeks. Had this happened over the ocean we would only have known that there had been a big explosion, we would presume it was a fireball, but it could be anything producing a large impulsive shock in the atmosphere,” Peter Brow says, quoted by Space. He is a scientist at the University of Western Ontario Department of Physics and Astronomy Meteor Infrasound group. Together with graduate student Elizabeth Silber, Brown has been in charge of performing a preliminary analysis of the object.

“Almost certainly it was detected and presumably immediately identified as an explosion of a large meteoroid rather than, say, an explosion of a human-made device in the atmosphere. But these satellites are secret and, in the past, the establishments controlling them have delayed releasing the data, for weeks or months. Scientists hope that they will reverse that policy. This event will demonstrate whether the wall of secrecy is coming down again, or not. Evidently, because of the passage of weeks since the event, there has been no decision to release the data promptly,” Chapman concludes.