Russian Fireball Wont Be Last Surprise Asteroid Attack

The world will have to live with surprise asteroid attacks on the scale of Friday's Russian fireball, at least for a while.

The meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk without warning Friday (Feb. 15), damaging hundreds of buildings and wounding more than 1,000 people, was caused by a space rock about 50 feet (15 meters) wide, researchers said.

Asteroids of this size are both difficult to detect and incredibly numerous, so it will take a long time for astronomers to find and map out the orbits of all the potentially dangerous ones. Besides, researchers have bigger fish to fry.

"Defending the Earth against tiny asteroids such as the one that passed over Siberia and…
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