Meteor crashes in Russia; Injures hundreds

[Serio]

This morning, at approximately 5:20 GMT, a meteor of a yet undertermined size crashed in the vicinity of the Russian town of Chebarkul, sending a shock wave that blew out windows in the region. At the present time, over 500 people are reported to have varying injuries, with up to 11 requiring treatment at hospitals.

This is unusual, since there are systems in place to warn of these incidents to allow evacuation of the predicted impact sites. There's no explanation yet as to why this system failed, but some believe that the meteor was shadowed by the sun, rendering the system useless.

Source BBC News - Meteor strike injures hundreds in central Russia

[The-Bleh-Bleh]

Surreal! Here's a good one:

Originally Posted by Serio

This is unusual, since there are systems in place to warn of these incidents to allow evacuation of the predicted impact sites. There's no explanation yet as to why this system failed, but some believe that the meteor was shadowed by the sun, rendering the system useless.

What system are you talking about? Isn't it infeasible to track every meteorite? My assumption is that there's too much area to cover to pick out every 10 ton black rock on a black background.

[Schofield]

Meteors can have their courses changed very easily, making them very hard to track. What you were tracking a day ago could be completely lost if it passes by another object in space. It's very easy for one to sneak close to Earth undetected. I think that's the way we plan on "moving" them as well, launch something at them and it will slowly move it away from Earth because of the gravitational pull.

I thought the noise in that video was cool, it was like an explosion but it sounded like the way the world would end.

[Toph]

You're both right, there are no such systems. Few near Earth objects are tracked relative to how many exist.

Very awesome though! It's extremely rare that such a strike happens in anything resembling a densely populated area!

[Deus Oblivionis]

Never mind my earlier comment, I was going on undocumented information, my bad

[Red Menace]

When you cover over one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, you're gonna get meteors.

[Ryojin]

Apparently objects under a certain size are undetectable, and could come at any time. There are systems in place to detect the larger ones, but the smaller ones seem to get lost easily. Most of the time, it isn't a problem. Most of the time, the objects either burn up in the atmosphere or fall into the ocean/unpopulated areas. Whether or not this particular one was under the easily traceable size, I don't know. I haven't read into it enough.



Comment which is slightly related to this topic:

Originally Posted by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

One half of one percent: The fraction of the US Federal Budget allocated to all of NASA's activities.

Originally Posted by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

One twentieth of one percent: The fraction of NASA's budget allocated to locating Killer Asteroids.

Wonder if it is higher in other places of the world...

[Commissar MercZ]

This is the crater the meteorite left.



It gives you an appreciation of physics that arguably a relatively small object was able to create such a significant shockwave.

[Ryojin]

Holy shit, really? I mean, I heard that what shattered the glass was the shockwave, but I didn't expect a hole that small! The shockwave seems disproportionate to the hole in the ground to me. Then again, I don't remember much of what I learned about physics...


Hmmm... I wonder what it would look like if it had fallen into a building. Perhaps it would look more devastating.

[Toph]

It was moving ~30km/s. That's an insane amount of energy. The infamous "they" said it released ~500 kilotons (TNT equivalent).