Talk:Farbanti/@comment-3308063-20190217200029/@comment-38600780-20190513164507

Gmin18 aha im sorry to say this but an airburst is actually far far worse. For example the Halifax explosion which occurred in Canada was a massive blast, an ammunition ship exploded with its full cargo creating a massive pressure wave. This happened obviously at sea level.

The Americans then studied this when determining how to deploy atomic weapons. In short an airburst of an explosion of reasonable distance would level far more area. The reason is the energy once absorbed into the ground now blankets a much larger area. Similarly buildings or hills which would have shadowed and protect things behind them now no longer do so.

If you look up the Tunguska event for comparison; an asteroid or comet airbursted and flattened 2000km2 of land(the explosion was at a height of around 5-6km from the surface with a force of 10-15 megatons). In comparison the Chylyabinsk meteor in 2013 detonated around 30km above the surface but with only about 500 kilotons of energy(0.5% of 1 megaton). This force was still enough to collapse roofs and shatter windows.

No, thinking about it in depth id say the most likely thing for Farbanti and many of the other craters in 4 is small(under 10 meters) very very fast (60,000km/h range) impacts directly hitting the ground. In order to survive atmospheric re-entry this would indicate Ulysses was likely an M-type asteroid with an iron-metallic composition(alternatively a V-type HED might be second best option, S-type and C-type would be too soft and disintegrate too quickly).