How to Use airburst in a Sentence

airburst

noun
  • The airburst arrived almost a minute and a half after the tremor.
    — Charles Pellegrino, Rolling Stone, 6 Aug. 2025
  • Tall el-Hammam may have been destroyed by a massive cosmic airburst and may have been the biblical Sodom.
    — Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 21 Jan. 2022
  • Tall el-Hammam may have been destroyed by a massive cosmic airburst and may have been the biblical Sodom.
    — Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harper’s Magazine , 4 Jan. 2022
  • There were also airbursts, little bags of materials discreetly hung in the air that look like outdoor aerial fireworks when trigged.
    — Matt Wake | [email protected], al, 28 July 2019
  • These could hold clues to future threats from space like airbursts and actual impacts into Earth's surface, according to researchers.
    — Hannah Millington, MSNBC Newsweek, 14 Nov. 2025
  • However, some astronomers wonder if these accounts describe a Tunguska-style airburst that leveled a city.
    — Eric Betz, Discover Magazine, 28 May 2020
  • This type of cosmic event is called an airburst because a comet or meteorite explodes high in the Earth's atmosphere, instead of striking the surface.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Feb. 2022
  • The airburst took place over what is modern-day iraq but the actual meteorite has yet to be located and verified, Brennecka writes.
    — Bruce Dorminey, Forbes, 25 Jan. 2022
  • Through the use of programmable airburst munitions, the system achieves an extremely high probability of hit against micro-drones.
    — Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 17 June 2026
  • For Kennett, further proof of the airburst was found by conducting many different kinds of analyses on soil and sediments from the critical layer.
    — David Bressan, Forbes, 21 Sep. 2021
  • But previous experience from WWII shows just how effective this type of airburst weapon is.
    — David Hambling, Forbes, 4 Sep. 2024
  • Frame-by-frame inspection suggests the weapon detonates before impact, creating an airburst which is more effective against personnel.
    — David Hambling, Forbes, 2 Aug. 2022
  • However, space rocks which were smaller than about 40 meters in diameter were more likely to explode in an airburst, posing a different kind of risk to the people below.
    — Jasper Hamill, Fox News, 28 June 2018
  • The roughly 20-meter space rock caused a powerful airburst that injured about 1,500 people and damaged thousands of buildings.
    — Marley Malenfant, Austin American Statesman, 19 Feb. 2026
  • The turret supports programmable airburst ammunition, enabling the Condor to engage drones and aircraft.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 26 Aug. 2025
  • Only within the last two years have corroborating documents been found that point to the 1888 death of a man via a meteoritic airburst, Brennecka writes.
    — Bruce Dorminey, Forbes, 25 Jan. 2022
  • The 2032 pass of the hypothetical swarm will arrive from the nighttime side of the Earth, at which point Boslough said the probability of an impact or airburst might be higher than average.
    — Hannah Millington, MSNBC Newsweek, 30 Oct. 2025
  • Past research has also suggested war or climate change may have cause the dissipation of Hopewell society, though the civilization may have eventually collapsed due to several causes, including a cosmic airburst.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Feb. 2022
  • Each airburst was as powerful as a nuclear blast, instantaneously vaporizing the soil and vegetation underneath and producing powerful shock waves that destroyed everything for tens of kilometers around.
    — Javier Barbuzano / Eos, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Apr. 2020
  • The latest analysis of the bollide that burst over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February suggests that the risk from such airbursts — which occur when friction in our atmosphere heats up a meteor — may be greater than previously thought.
    — Adam Mann, WIRED, 7 Oct. 2013

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'airburst.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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