Huge Meteor Blazes Across Sky Over Russia; Hundreds Injured 409
New submitter dovf writes "The Bad Astronomer analyzes incoming reports about the apparent meteoric fireball over Russia: 'Apparently, at about 09:30 local time, a very big meteor burned up over Chelyabinsk, a city in Russia just east of the Ural mountains, and about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow. The fireball was incredibly bright, rivaling the Sun! There was a pretty big sonic boom from the fireball, which set off car alarms and shattered windows. I'm seeing some reports of many people injured (by shattered glass blown out by the shock wave). I'm also seeing reports that some pieces have fallen to the ground, but again as I write this those are unconfirmed." This is the best summary I've found so far, and links to lots of videos and images. He also clarifies something I've been wondering about: 'This is almost certainly unrelated to the asteroid 2012 DA14 that will pass on Friday.'"
Almost? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Almost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not likely. DA14 is a few hours away and moving very fast... which means that it's still very far away.
I think the most interesting part of this incident is that there are reports a missile was sent up to intercept it, and hit it. I'm still not convinced that it wasn't just the meteor breaking up like so many of them do, but it would be amusing if that somehow made the ground damage worse.
And in Soviet Russia, dashcam watch meteor hit YOU!
Re:Almost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unrelated to 2012 DA14? (Score:2, Interesting)
Still, I can't believe this. There is an asteroid passing very close to Earth, and on the same day we have this impact with hundreds of injuries. These are both very rare events, so it seems unlikely that they are unrelated. Maybe the orbits of both asteroids were linked somehow?
Re:On injuries and damage (Score:5, Interesting)
No serious damage? Yeah, what could possibly go wrong in a city with 1M people, that has no gas supply and frozen hospitals?
Minimum temperatures are -4F/-20C at night right now, and maximum aren't much higher.
Re:On injuries and damage (Score:4, Interesting)
No serious damage? Yeah, what could possibly go wrong in a city with 1M people, that has no gas supply and frozen hospitals?
Minimum temperatures are -4F/-20C at night right now, and maximum aren't much higher.
hate to be a dick about this, but they're russians, so they can handle the state failing for couple of days.
Re:On injuries and damage (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd guess that most of the direct injuries happened when people ran to their windows to watch the flare and contrail. Looking at the videos, the sonic boom happened at least 27 seconds later: right when people would be clustered in front of the glass.
It is similar to Tsunamis, where a lot of the fatalities happen to people who chase the receding sea...
RIA Novosti coverage (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Almost? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories (Score:4, Interesting)
ballistics (Score:5, Interesting)
Meteors and ICMBs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) both travel on "ballistic" trajectories. I.E. when they're coming down, they don't change speed or course under their own power. This makes it very easy (relatively, for people that do it for a living) to track their point of origin. This would clearly be coming from space, not from another continent.
What interests me the most here is why wasn't this all over the news? We see posts about twice a year talking about the next "near miss" we're going to have. So what happened with this one? Didn't they catch it? Or did they catch it, realize it was going to hit, and decide not to tell anybody? It would be a lot more interesting to find out details on it being known, covered up, and an intercept attempted. (and possibly successfully)
Continuing on that tangent, hollywood tells us from Independence Day "and turn one dangerous falling object into many?" In other words, blowing it up doesn't immediately lower it's total combined mass, so is it a good idea or a bad idea? I suppose if you start with something massive enough to get through the atmosphere and hit dirt, if you have a chance to blow it up into say a dozen smaller pieces that have a good chance of burning up in the atmosphere, that'd be a good option. Even if you busted it up it up into say four smaller pieces, their surface area to mass ratio goes way up and the four that make it to the ground should have burned off more mass and impact with less energy than the original one would have.
But rather than trying to play an armchair quarterback, I'm just askin' the questions, I'll leave answering those questions to the "rocket scientists".
1000 miles due south (Score:5, Interesting)
do the math.. a 1000 miles away (radius) equates 3,141,590 sq miles to track
for something that occurs in 30 seconds... and has a cross section of a few feet.
here is a nice 1000 mile circle
http://reyscars.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/1000-mile-radius-map.jpg [reyscars.com]
examine that entire region for a speck about 20-50 feet wide....
Re:30 years ago? End of world. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re-entry vehicles from ICBMs do. [wikipedia.org]
Re:ballistics (Score:4, Interesting)