Preatmospheric Detection of a Meter-sized Earth Impactor
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract On 2020 September 18 U.S. Government (USG) sensors detected a bolide with peak bolometric magnitude of −19 over the Western Pacific. The impact was also detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper instrument on the GOES-17 satellite and infrasound sensors in Hawaii. The USG measurements reported a steep entry angle of 67° from horizontal from a radiant 13° east of north and an impact speed of 11.7 km s −1 . Interpretation of all energy yields produces a preferred energy estimate of 0.4 kt TNT, corresponding to a 23,000 kg, 3 m diameter meteoroid. A postimpact search of telescopic images found that the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System survey captured the object just 10 minutes prior to impact at an Earth-centered distance of nearly 11,900 km with apparent magnitude m = 12.5. The object appears as a 0.44° streak originating on the eastern edge of the image, extending one-third of the USG state-vector-based prediction of 1.26° over the 30 s exposure. The streak shows brightness variability consistent with small asteroid rotation. The position of Earth’s shadow, the object’s size, and its consistency with the reported USG state vector confirm the object is likely natural. This is the eighth preatmospheric detection of a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) impactor and the closest initial telescopic detection prior to impact. The high altitude of peak fireball brightness suggests it was a weak object comparable in many respects with 2008 TC3 (the Almahata Sitta meteorite), with an absolute magnitude H = 32.5 and likely low albedo. Therefore, we suggest the NEA was a C-complex asteroid.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it