How close we came to extinction in 1883

[justthetruth]

A re-analysis of historical observations suggest Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago
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Manterola and co end their paper by spelling out just how close Earth may have come to catastrophe that day. They point out that Bonilla observed these objects for about three and a half hours over two days. This implies an average of 131 objects per hour and a total of 3275 objects in the time between observations.

Each fragment was at least as big as the one thought to have hit Tunguska. Manterola and co end with this: "So if they had collided with Earth we would have had 3275 Tunguska events in two days, probably an extinction event."

A sobering thought.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/

Maybe someone was looking out for us.