At least in the imagination of the people nearest the Tunguska Event of June 30, 1908. (I know, I’m a couple months late, but what’s a couple months is cosmic-geologic time?)

Something—no one’s quite sure what—created a massive fireball over a remote swamp in Siberia with the force of something like ten Hiroshima-sized atom bombs. An asteroid is the most likely suspect, but no crater or meteorite has ever been found.

A whole lotta theories have been put forward, with “stony-asteroid airburst” seeming to hold the post position with respectable scientists—most of whom freely admit that it’s a best guess given the paucity of evidence.

The JPL’s best guess is that such things hit Earth on average every thousand or fifteen hundred years. Of course, that’s an average. And there may be bigger rocks out there than the Tunguska object in bound. While we probably could figure out how to stop one with enough notice, the question remains how much notice we’ll get.

Keep watching the skies.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.