If an asteroid hits the Earth’s atmosphere and burns up in fiery glory and no one sees it. did it exist.
It did, An astronomer in Arizona spotted the small object in the sky on New Year’s Eve.
A day later, the astronomical world agrees, the asteroid smashed into the earth’s atmosphere and burned up in a fireball.
But it happened over the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere between South America and East Africa. No sailors out at sea, no jet pilots or airline passengers saw it.
The lesson of this is: these strike happen more often that we may realize. It’s just there’s a lot of ocean, a lot of desert, a lot on tundra and boreal forest, where they’re no one around to watch.
Here’s the full story from Sky & Telescope: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/Small-Asteroid-2014-AA-Hits-Earth-238481431.html