As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface temperature of the Sun. In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor's path—people, houses, factories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame.
使用過打氣筒的人都知道，受到壓縮的空氣馬上會變熱，底下的溫度有可能升高到大約6萬攝氏度，或10倍于太陽的表面溫度。在抵達我們大氣層的剎那間，隕星所經之處的一切——人、房子、工廠、汽車——都會坍縮，像膠膜那樣在烈火中消失。
One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth's surface, where the people of Manson had a moment before been going about their business. The meteorite itself would vaporize instantly, but the blast would blow out a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, earth, and superheated gases. Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn't been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast. Radiating outward at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it.
進入大氣層一秒鐘之后，隕星就會撞擊地球表面。在那里，曼森人一會兒之前還在各忙各的事。隕星本身也頓時化成蒸氣，發生爆炸。爆炸會炸掉1000立方公里的巖石、泥土和過熱的氣體。在方圓250公里之內，凡是在隕星進入大氣層的過程中沒有被熱死的生物，此刻會在爆炸中死于非命。第一輪沖擊波幾乎會以光的速度向外輻射，橫掃前面的一切事物。
For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light—the brightest ever seen by human eyes—followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur: a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling an entire field of view and traveling at thousands of miles an hour. Its approach would be eerily silent since it would be moving far beyond the speed of sound.
對于直接災區以外的人來說，第一個感覺是一道炫目的閃光——人的肉眼所見到過的最亮的閃光——緊接著是一幅難以想像的恐怖情景，仿佛世界末日已經來臨，持續一剎那到一兩分鐘：一片翻滾的黑幕以每小時幾千公里的速度向前推進，擋住了整個視野，直達九天云霄。它的到來是悄然無聲的，因為它移動的速度遠遠超過了聲速。
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