Craterless Airbursts Are Underestimated

Researchers report evidence that atmospheric 'touchdown airbursts' can devastate the surface with heat and pressure yet leave no lasting crater. If these events happened more often than we thought, hazard estimates that rely on crater counts systematically understate impact risk. That shifts focus to detection, monitoring, and civil‑defense planning for blast and thermal effects. — It reframes planetary‑defense policy and risk models toward invisible but high‑impact events, a classic fat‑tail governance problem.