[Lonesome in Massachussets]

NASA is saying more like 7000-10,000 tons. A 15 meter diameter sphere of iron would weight about 14,000 tons, of water like 1,700 tons (displacement of WW-II destroyer). A one ton sphere of iron would be about 1.3 m (four feet) across.

[steve86]

NASA is saying more like 7000-10,000 tons.

I have seen this estimate also; what I don't understand is where are the big pieces and big craters. Yes, the outer portion can vaporize, but the inner cores of the pieces are still going to be not much above absolute zero. Is that idea that the whole thing detonated into dust and a few pieces of pea gravel that ended up in the lake or somewhere?

[Strategerist]

If this was an iron it would have hit, most probably. Based on NASA’s numbers for the diameter and weight, it would have been a slightly-denser than average stony meteorite.

However, entering the NASA parameters and the angle in this calculator (About 20 degrees) you don’t end up with nearly enough kilotons for the explosion, or enough overpressure to break glass.

http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=0&distanceUnits=1&diam=17&diameterUnits=1&pdens=3526&pdens_select=3000&vel=18&velocityUnits=1&theta=10&wdepth=&wdepthUnits=1&tdens=2500

[Strategerist]

There’s going to be a documentary on this at 8PM Eastern tonight on the Science Channel (my cable’s guide hasn’t updated to show this yet.)