Do you think the information in the following article could be related to why an Emergency Preparedness Scenario has been planned that simulates what should be done if meteor strikes are reported in Oklahoima and Texas?
(Keep in mind that a meteor is a solid particle that has been part of a comet or an asteroid and has found its way into Earth's orbit and meteors that strike Earth are called meteorites.)
A New Count of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
May 16, 1012
Excerpt:
The asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission, called NEOWISE, sampled 107 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) to make predictions about the population as a whole.
Findings indicate there are roughly 4,700 PHAs, plus or minus 1,500, with diameters larger than 330 feet (about 100 meters). So far, an estimated
20 to 30 percent of these objects
have been found.
The new analysis suggests that about twice as many PHAs as previously thought reside in low-inclination orbits, which are roughly aligned with the plane of Earth's orbit.
"Our team was surprised to find the overabundance of low-inclination PHAs," said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The lower-inclination PHAs appear to be somewhat brighter and smaller than other near-Earth asteroids. They are [also] more likely to be either stony, like granite, or metallic. The composition of the bodies affect how quickly they might burn up in our atmosphere
if an encounter were to take place.
[
link to science.nasa.gov]