London Science Museum

Used the holiday for a short trip to London. More specifically for a short trip to the science museum! I was amazed at the number of authentic items on display!

My favourite:

The Apollo 10 command module. This baby really flew around the moon. It is on lone form NASA. Let me repeat: this baby flew around the moon! Actually!! Not a mock up!

Next:

The original mirror of the 44 foot telescope from William Herschel. And even better: I'm reflected in it...

An original V2 rocket... Need I say more?

A Cray 1 Supercomputer...

One million volt particle accelerator from 1937. Wow....

Update!

The mass estimates have gone up from 10000 kg to 10000000 kg (see:. nasa website). This seems like an absurd update, but in size it means that the object was only 10 times bigger than previous estimates (10 to the power 3 = 1000).
This also means that the equivalent energy released could be as high as 250 kiloton TNT.

This is equal to 17 Hiroshima bombs...

Why did we not see more destruction?

Several factors:
1) The energy was not released in 1 go. It was released during its flight...
2) The energy was released somewhere between 10 and 30 km above ground...

A big meteor fell from the sky in Russia. Could we do some calculations on it?

Yes we can!

see: http://www.bozon.org/tweets/Russia-Rock.pdf

Based on simple calculations I've estimated the amount of kinetic energy the object had to be around 1/4 kiloton TNT. So approximately 50 times smaller than Hiroshima. Still a respectable amount of energy.

In addition a simulation of the results if the rock was a little bigger & a little faster... (actually an order of magnitude)

Please note: above simulation assumes all the energy is released at once several hundreds meters above amsterdam. In reality the results will be far less devastating.