Meteorite Hits Russia: Official

[pacovl46]

I read in the paper today that around 500 people got insured, some of them seriously, when the meteorite exploded and the bang busted windows.

[Samuimike1]

From E.T. with love.

[theajarn]

SH*t that was SOME meteor! I was thinking it was from 2012 DA14, but the reports say not.

Hollywood's gonna benefit the most from this... no more stupid flaming ping-pong balls. More like bus-sized rock that leaves a kick-ass shockwave in its wake... invisible forces shattering glass. Oh, and don't forget the nuke-like blinding light. Yeah, Hollywood's definitely going to take note.

But Hollywood's version will probably be even more gratifying: blinding ping-pong balls that topple buildings with EMP shockwaves that melt iPhones...

Edited February 16, 2013 by theajarn

[theajarn]

Okay so NASA warns us of the one thats not going to hit, but they either didn't know or didn't tell about the one thats going to hit. Sleep well tonight friends.

That's the scary thing --- does this mean NASA can't SEE these smaller ones? We can get hit by a whole shower of these things and not be warned???

In any case... look at the bright side. How many people can claim "death by meteor strike" eh? eh??

Edited February 16, 2013 by theajarn

[Tywais]

Okay so NASA warns us of the one thats not going to hit, but they either didn't know or didn't tell about the one thats going to hit. Sleep well tonight friends.

That's the scary thing --- does this mean NASA can't SEE these smaller ones? We can get hit by a whole shower of these things and not be warned???

In any case... look at the bright side. How many people can claim "death by meteor strike" eh? eh??

The 150-foot-wide meteor that flew by Earth Friday and the smaller one that exploded over Russia hours before were too small to be easily detected. They are not even targets in NASA’s surveillance of potentially hazardous objects.

“The surveys are not designed to differentiate all the small ones like that. That would require a way bigger effort and probably more extensive technology,” said Robert McMillan, a pioneer in the search for near-Earth objects.

McMillan, who co-founded the University of Arizona’s Spacewatch program in 1980, said the various NASA-funded programs that search for hazardous objects have a goal of finding meteors 140 meters or greater in diameter.

NASA was originally given a goal by Congress in 1998 to identify potentially hazardous objects a full kilometer (3,280 feet) or more in diameter — that’s the size capable of having a civilization-altering impact.

The meteor that is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, for example, was estimated at 10 kilometers in diameter.

The 140-meter threshold was ordered by Congress in 2005 to detect objects that could be regionally devastating.

You have to draw the line somewhere, said McMillan.

“Big objects are more dangerous and small objects more numerous,” said McMillan, “but we follow up on anything that looks like a potential impacter.”

Meteor 2012 DA14, for example, was well under the threshold at 45 meters, but once it was detected by amateur astronomers at an observatory in southern Spain, it was added to the watch list. It flew by Friday, as predicted, a full 17,200 miles from Earth.

The object that exploded over Russia was too small to spot when it was farther out in space, and it made its approach toward Earth from the direction of the sun where it was undetectable, said Bill Cooke, lead for the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Source

[Tywais]

Airburst Explained: NASA Addresses the Russian Meteor Explosion

A small asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere early Friday, February 15, 2013 over Chelyabinsk, Russia at about 9:20 am local Russian time. Initial estimates, according to Bill Cooke, lead for the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, is that the asteroid was about 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter, with a weight of 7,000 metric tons. It hit the atmosphere at a shallow angle of about 20 degrees, at a speed of about 65,000 km/h (40,000 mph).

It traveled through the atmosphere for about 30 seconds before breaking apart and producing violent airburst ‘explosion’ about 20-14 km (12-15 miles) above Earth’s surface, producing an energy shockwave equivalent to a 300 kilotons explosion. That energy propagated down through the atmosphere, atmosphere, stuck the city below – the Chelyabinsk region has a population of about 1 million — and windows were broken, walls collapsed and there were other reports of minor damage throughout the city.

The official impact time was 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15).

Cooke said that at this time, the known damage is not due to fragments of the bolide striking the ground but only from the airburst. “There are undoubtedly fragments on the ground, but at the current time no pieces have been recovered that we can verify with any certainty,” Cooke said during a media teleconference today.

He added that the space rock appears to be “an asteroid in nature,” – likely a rocky asteroid since it broke apart in the atmosphere. It wasn’t detected by telescopes searching for asteroids because of its small size, but also because “it came out of the daylight side of our planet – was in the daylight sky and as a result was not detected by any earth based telescopes. #RussianMeteor was not detected from Earth because it came from the daylight side (i.e the Sun-facing side of Earth).

More here - Universe Today

[Tywais]

We continue our coverage today looking at a meteor strike which hit five cities in the Urals in Russia, leading to what some are estimating 1,000 injuries. Here to talk about the meteorite strike and our ability to predict and understand them is Dr. Jim Zimbelman, he is a geologist at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum. Everyone was looking at the skies today but for a very different reason. This is quite a coincidence that DA-14 happened at the same day, right?

It is and I was interested to hear NASA spokesman this morning, making it very clear that the two were completely unrelated in their orbits.

And in terms of this meteorite, was there any warning, is there any ability to have a warning for an event like this?

Yes there is. The question is at what size limit do we no longer detect things and that has been a point of discussion for quite some time. Starting many years ago but really getting in earnest about ten or fifteen years ago, NASA has been supporting sort of grassroots efforts by some amateur and professional astronomers to look for asteroids that could be civilization-threatening, the ones that would really be an enormous problem for the whole Earth. And NASA has enabled that kind of search to be quite thorough for these catastrophic ones. I think, the last estimate I’ve heard that there were over 95% of the ones that we think should be out there, that would be a size that would be, you know, end-of-civilization kind of event. We know where just about all of those are. The problem is the smaller they are the harder they are to detect and where exactly is that cut-off. It’s probably slightly larger than today’s meteor strike. That is even with this wonderful program that is ongoing now between NASA and several other countries I seriously doubt that we would have easily detected the object that hit this morning.

Read more here - The Voice of Russia

[Potosi]

Okay so NASA warns us of the one thats not going to hit, but they either didn't know or didn't tell about the one thats going to hit. Sleep well tonight friends.

That's the scary thing --- does this mean NASA can't SEE these smaller ones? We can get hit by a whole shower of these things and not be warned???

In any case... look at the bright side. How many people can claim "death by meteor strike" eh? eh??

Nothing to worry about. Say one of the small boulders can destroy everything on the area of an acre. There are more than 12 billions of them on earth.

[coma]

A simply phenomenal event. Unbelieveable footage. What a sight to see. And lucky nobody was seriously injured. Just got to love nature at its best.

[Samuimike1]

Fireball over Cuba and San Franzisco

http://www.telegraph...California.html

under attack fom E.T. with love

Edited February 18, 2013 by Samuimike1

[jamhar]

Its fun to go back and read the earlier posts after the event

On NASA's account that the russian meteor and the flyby of 2012DA14 are unrelated.

What are the odds, that a once in a 5 year event (russian meteor), a 5 times a year event (SF meteor sighting), another 5 times a year event (cuba's meteor sighting) and the flyby of 2012DA14 (closest fly by recorded), would all occur in a 24 hour period, but are COMPLETELY unrelated?

Now i know the nasa boys are smart, i know many of em (engineers). but come on! It at least point towards a group of objects that have nearly identical orbits, and we can expect possible similar event at the next similar flyby.

Sorry for my rant. lol

[T_Dog]

Its fun to go back and read the earlier posts after the event

On NASA's account that the russian meteor and the flyby of 2012DA14 are unrelated.

What are the odds, that a once in a 5 year event (russian meteor), a 5 times a year event (SF meteor sighting), another 5 times a year event (cuba's meteor sighting) and the flyby of 2012DA14 (closest fly by recorded), would all occur in a 24 hour period, but are COMPLETELY unrelated?

Now i know the nasa boys are smart, i know many of em (engineers). but come on! It at least point towards a group of objects that have nearly identical orbits, and we can expect possible similar event at the next similar flyby.

Sorry for my rant. lol

The two rocks did come from two totally different directions with totally uncorrelated trajectories, so I think the NASA boys have it right this time.

[Potosi]

Its fun to go back and read the earlier posts after the event

On NASA's account that the russian meteor and the flyby of 2012DA14 are unrelated.

What are the odds, that a once in a 5 year event (russian meteor), a 5 times a year event (SF meteor sighting), another 5 times a year event (cuba's meteor sighting) and the flyby of 2012DA14 (closest fly by recorded), would all occur in a 24 hour period, but are COMPLETELY unrelated?

Do you suggest the dear Lord is hurling boulders from outer space to give us a warning?

A rock many times the size of 2012DA14 passed earth last month at a large distance, but will be back in 2029 and uncomfortably close next time. http://gizmodo.com/5974708/apophis-may-destroy-earth-satellites-in-2029