When the big asteroid hits, will you breath a sigh of relief when you see on the news that it missed your city? Don't. A new study found that the bite of an asteroid impact does less damage that the bark of the wind created when it hits the Earth's atmosphere, even if it breaks up and never actually craters the surface. The study sounds more like something conducted by an insurance company than a group of astronomers. As reported in Meteoritics and Planetary Science, Clemens Rumpf at the University of Southampton, UK, led a team that calculated the mortality risk of asteroids on residential areas based on whether the impact was a direct hit on a city, a splash in an ocean or a flame-out in the atmosphere. Their findings were surprising because they defied conventional thinking. Most people assume a tsunami created by an asteroid hitting in water would cause the most overall damage because it could hit multiple cities along a coastline, while a direct hit would be second in causalities