Tiny meteorite (1.5 feet across) enters Earth's atmosphere and burns up. What is so remarkable about this? Doesn't this happen like every day?
This extrasolar thing hit the Earth at 200km/h+.
Remember that the kinetic energy formula = 0.5 * m * v²
Is the velocity squared that means something very small can still wipe out an entire city in a gigantic fireball with little to no warning and ability to do anything about it. This is a very big deal for the people looking at things like asteroid defense at civilization time scales.
Yes, exactly.
On Russian astronomy forums where discussion, in which decided, such thing could be planetary scale weapon.
That's why many smart people think, that tries to contact extraterrestrial civilizations are extremely dangerous for humanity.
Stuff from outside is a lot rarer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity#List_of_escape...
BTW interesting, that on some places in Sun system, difference of 2nd and 3rd speeds is much less.