Risk models and funding focus on crater-forming impacts, undercounting frequent, craterless 'touchdown airbursts' that deliver atomic-bomb–scale heat/pressure without obvious geological signatures.
— Shifts planetary-defense policy (survey thresholds, warning protocols, FEMA playbooks) toward small/medium near-Earth objects and public alerting, challenging complacent asteroid-crater paradigms and highlighting fat-tail governance.
Bob Grant
2025.08.21
100% relevant
Kennett et al.’s four papers, cited here, argue such airbursts are globally recurrent and devastating despite leaving no craters, implying our historical record and hazard estimates are systematically biased.
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