Near Earth Incursions Are Dangerously Close in Space and Timing. Sometimes Both.

In the roughly 40 years since the acceptance of cosmic impact as a legitimate scientific framework, the near-Earth environment has proven considerably more active than most people realize. Randall documents hundreds of close calls and incursions by cosmic objects - some dangerously close in terms of distance, some dangerously close in terms of timing, and some both simultaneously.

Graham Dunlop brings the conversation to ground level with a specific and recent example - a fireball over Calgary that produced what he describes as a shotgun blast pattern, with another breaking up over Ohio in a way that appeared online to be executing near 90 degree turns through the atmosphere. Randall confirms that behavior is physically possible - the geometry of an irregular, non-spherical object tumbling through the atmosphere can produce exactly that kind of erratic trajectory. The frequency of these events, the proximity of some of the encounters, and the increasingly visible nature of the incursions in an age of ubiquitous cameras is painting a picture of a near-Earth environment that Randall argues deserves considerably more public attention than it currently receives.

Click here to watch the new episode with grimerica discussing the true origins of cosmic impacts

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