[Steely Tom]

On Earth at least we an atmosphere to help slow these things down. And still they can obviously cause a lot of damage and destruction.

At 56,000 mph, it would traverse the entire 50 mile thickness of our atmosphere in about 3.5 seconds. Of course, that's not accounting for braking.

I suppose the rate of heating it would undergo in the last two seconds or so might cause it to break up, but even a six inch chunk hitting something at 10,000 mph would leave quite an impression.

[Squawk 8888]

If it was rock, it would explode long before reaching the ground, similar to what happened in Russia.