Now available in JGR-Planets (that’s Journal of Geophysical Research-), for Feb (vol. 131 #2):
Chow, I. Brown, P. G. Decameter-Sized Earth Impactors—II: A Bayesian Inference Approach to Meteoroid Ablation Modeling e2025JE009392 2025JE009392
We’re not too worried about the smallest class of asteroids, up to 1 meter (the minimum defined diameter of an asteroid) to possibly ~10 meters. These bodies burn up in our atmosphere. (Chelyabinsk was a bit bigger, 15-20 meters, and it still failed to strike the surface with nontrivial kinetic energy.) Still, let’s not sweep the issue under the rug. These are space objects, they are not rare (they just happen to be rare over populated areas), and they can tell us something of larger and larger classes of impactors.
Chow and Brown aren’t dismissing the issue, by any means. Not only do they model the burn-up of very small asteroids, but (and this is a big step) they calibrate the models against real observations of bright fireballs in our atmosphere. The Department of Defense, NASA, Weather, etc. collect data on these fireballs by pure chance (entering bolides sure look like enemy warheads). This data collection extends to deserts and mountains, icecaps and oceans. As this fireball data is (eventually) declassified, we build a significant and growing catalog of bolide events. Chow and Brown used it.