The trace of a flying object in the sky over Chelyabinsk (still from a dashboard camera). Photo courtesy of Nakanune.RU.(RIA Novosti / Oleg Vinogradov)

Nature permits us to live in her varied and sometimes misunderstood landscape and for the most part we are able to do so without too many untoward incidents demonstrative of her incalculable destructive power. From time to time in various parts of this world we inhabit close to one of her uncountably numerous stars, we are reminded that we live on the cusp of disequilibrium.

It's just as well that the human spirit is resilient enough to recover from such shocks. We have been imbued with the ability for our minds to rationalize, to believe that such occurrences are rare enough as to present themselves as clearly non-representative of the security we feel throughout the normal course of our lives and the events that impact on them.

It is mostly those with the professional knowledge, those experts who specialize in the study of rare events like meteorite trajectories and impacts - like earthquakes and massive tsunamis, like global weather systems, like volcanic eruptions, exceptional heat-or-cold conditions, droughts, past extinctions - who are aware of the potentials. And even they take comfort in the assurance of these events representing off-chance rare occurrences.

And life goes on.