The odds are mind-blowing. The very same day we were waiting for an asteroid to pass closer to the earth than any in a very long time, a meteorite slammed into the atmosphere from the
other direction - the biggest such event in a century. And the scale: the meteorite may have been no bigger than a car, but it produced waves of sonic booms which shattered windows and injured people for hundreds of miles. Golly.
Actually what's not news is that objects should be hitting earth from various directions. Turns out that smaller objects in enormous numbers drop by continually, adding up to 80,000 tons every day. Most are tiny and burn up in the atmosphere. All it takes to make the streaks in the sky we call "shooting stars" is a meteorite bit the size of a pea!
