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Subscribe to RSSA massive meteor hit the Earth's atmosphere, creating a giant shock wave that injured more than 1,000 people. On the same day, an asteroid half the size of a football field came within 17,200 miles from Earth. NBC's Tom Costello reports.
A meteor flared through the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region early Friday, triggering an atomic bomb-sized shock wave that injured more than a thousand people, blew out windows and caused some Russians to fear the end of the world.
NASA said it was the largest reported fireball since the Tunguska event in 1908 — an asteroid explosion that flattened millions of trees over 820 square miles of remote Siberian forest.
Friday's event was witnessed by throngs of Russians in Chelyabinsk, a city of 1.1 million in western Siberia. Multiple amateur videos posted online showed the meteor’s flaring arc stretching hundreds of miles across the sky. Other videos from the scene captured the sound of a loud boom, followed by a cacophony of car alarms. One video showed the hurried evacuation of an office building in Chelyabinsk.
“There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people’s houses to check if they were OK,” Chelyabinsk resident Sergey Hametov told The Associated Press. “We saw a big burst of light then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud thundering sound.”
Another resident described the meteorite's flash.
"I was standing at a bus stop, seeing off my girlfriend," Andrei, a local resident who did not give his second name, told Reuters. "Then there was a flash and I saw a trail of smoke across the sky and felt a shock wave that smashed windows."
The impact involved a 50-foot-wide (15-meter-wide), 7,000-ton asteroid that zoomed in from space at a velocity of 40,000 mph (18 kilometers per second), NASA officials said. They said the shock of atmospheric entry blasted the rock apart at a height of 12 to 15 miles (20 to 25 kilometers), releasing the energy equivalent of 300 to 500 kilotons of TNT. That's more than 10 times the energy released by the atom bombs that exploded over Japan at the end of World War II. In fact, NASA said its estimates were based on readings from infrasound sensors that were set up by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization to detect nuclear blasts.
The fireball hit just hours before a 150-foot-wide asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, came within 17,200 miles of Earth during an unusually close but harmless flyby. NASA officials said there was no connection between the two events. "It's simply a coincidence," said Paul Chodas, an asteroid researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA said the flash momentarily shone brighter than the sun — an assessment that was echoed by eyewitnesses in Chelyabinsk.
"I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day," Viktor Prokofiev told Reuters. "I felt like I was blinded by headlights.”
No fatalities were reported, but Russia's Interior Ministry said about 1,100 people sought medical care after the shock wave. About 50 were hospitalized. Most of the injured were cut by glass from windows that were shattered by the blast's shock wave. More than 200 children at Chelyabinsk schools were said to be among the injured.
Chelyabinsk resident Marat Lobkovsky's experience was typical: "I went to see what that flash in the sky was about," he told AP. "And then the window glass shattered, bouncing back on me. My beard was cut open, but not deep. They patched me up, it’s OK now."
Another city resident, Valya Kazakov, said the brilliant flare and loud explosion caused older women in his neighborhood to fear that the world was ending.
City officials told AP that 3,000 buildings in the Chelyabinsk region were damaged, including a zinc factory warehouse that lost its roof and part of a wall because of the shock wave's battering. Russia's Itar-Tass news agency said as many as 10,000 police were mobilized to aid in the recovery and remove debris.
There were no significant disturbances to public utilities or communications, Vladimir Stepanov of the Emergency Situation Ministry told Itar-Tass. "No serious consequences have been so far recorded," Stepanov said. "There has been no disruption in the rail and air transport work."
A search was conducted to find any fragments that survived when the space rock blew itself apart. A photo provided by the Chelyabinsk regional police department showed a 20-foot-wide (6-meter-wide) hole in the ice covering a lake near the town of Chebakul where some of the fragments reportedly fell.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, speaks to NBC's Lester Holt about the meteor and asteroid that approached Earth on Friday.
The shallow angle at which the meteor crossed the sky over Chelyabinsk contributed to the amount of damage, according to Margaret Campbell-Brown, an astronomer and physicist at the University of Western Ontario. “It’s like a sonic boom,” Campbell-Brown said of the shock wave. “A sonic boom from a plane can shatter windows, but this sonic boom was much stronger than a plane."
It was a once-in-a-decade event, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson told TODAY on Friday. He explained that the meteor impact was the physics equivalent of hitting a brick wall. “When you hit a brick wall, you basically explode, and that’s what happened here, and it exploded in midair,” Tyson said.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the incident showed the need for the world's nations to develop a system to intercept objects falling from space. "At the moment, neither we nor the Americans have such technologies" to shoot down meteors or asteroids, he said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Coincidentally, experts from NASA and other agencies were at a U.N. space conference in Vienna on Friday to discuss strategies for developing an asteroid early warning system.
Yekaterina Pustynnikova / Chelyabinsk.ru via AP
A huge meteor flared through the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region, triggering a powerful shock wave that injured nearly a thousand people, blew out windows and reportedly caused the roof of a factory to collapse.
More about cosmic impacts:
- Meteor blast sparks conspiracy theories in Russia
- Internet users watch asteroid fly by and fade out
- Asteroid's close shave ranks among top hits and misses
- Meteorite from California fireball reveals its secrets
This report includes information from The Associated Press and Reuters.
The videos just keep streaming in from Chelyabinsk. You'll find lots of great clips and stills on this Live Journal page and this WBVF wrap-up. Thanks to my Twitter pals for passing them along.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
This story was originally published on Fri Feb 15, 2013 5:05 AM EST
Leave a Comment:
Why couldn't this thing have flowen, slightly closer to the earth and over DC during the State of the Union Speach? Just think we might actually be on the way to a real recovery by now if it had!
LOL, Love it! Unfortunately though, we would still be whinning over that racist meteor that attacked Obama.
what color is a meteor anyway?
Julia, bright!
LMAO! I don't know, but, I'm sure if it went after the president, it'd be called a racist!
Designer or pedestrian?
Apparently this one is of the Russian line....
In that case, the color would be a subtle corrosion hue with just a touch of rust accented with crappy yellow stencil.
lol!!!
and dumb me, I was thinking red....
You know when I first looked at the youtube video where it shows it coming out of nowhere it was super freaky. I spent most of my morning in the car with my eyes fixed on the horizon.....how scary it woud be. Someone knew about this but decided to keep shut. Our government ...your government .....nothing?! Really? Please!!! People knew and probably had it pegged for that region. Does everyone in Russia have a dash cam? Think about it. Seriously?!?!?!?!
I thought about it, seriously. You have no idea what happened, do you?
Yes. Unlawful entry without the proper visa, failure to clear customs, and no flight plan. If they find those aliens in the lake, they are in deep kimchi.
That is why during the height of the "Cold War" (1945-1990) the Nuclear Warheads were designed as "Air Bursts", not ground bursts, for maximum effect (including punching a hole in the upper atmosphere, maximum range of EMP/EMR).
The overpressure and concussive force would kill you, if this were something bigger like DA14, just like when we find people that look like they are sleeping after just a 500 pound bomb, their internal organs turned to jello, their flexible elastic skin holds all that mush together.
Stop posting things you do not know about. The man made equavlent is a Nuclear Warhead of 3.5 Mega Tons (MT). You want to see what a less effective ground burst of only 10 Kilo Tons (KT) would do;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCme_K6MYLY
How fast does a ICBM Nuclear Warhead reenter the Earth's Atmosphere (unlike the movies an actual ICBM warhead does go into space). Hint: The Space Shuttle reached speeds of Mach 12, before doing wing tipping to shed speed.
How big is a Nuclear Warhead from an ICBM, that is purposely made to have semi stealth capabilities to avoid radar detection of an Anti Ballistic Missile System.
That is not even funny, and it is, President Obama as Commander In Chief is ordering the 11% US Defense Budget Cuts; as this also includes the US Anti Ballastic Missile Systems previously funded as demanded by President Bush (43) against "the Iranian Missile Threat". The loss of US Defense Budget Funds also affects the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, the same people that brought to you the funding for the Stanford Research Institute invention of the Computer Mouse, President Regan's negating of all the USSR Efforts with the "StarWars" Initative, the research into a viable Anti Ballistic Missile System that negated the USSR's Strategic (Nuclear) Missile Forces Superiority (numbers of ICBMs, IRBMs, Missiles (Launch Platforms)).
As previously negotiated away by US Policitians, as the ABM Treaty:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sprint+spartan+abm&view=detail&mid=56E6E625637FCDD3C3AC56E6E625637FCDD3C3AC&first=0&FORM=NVPFVR
President Obama allowed the President Bush previously proposed Budget Cut of NASA. Pertaining to the NASA Space Shuttle, you do NOT get rid of something until you have an Operational replacement (the Space Shuttle was not just flying NASA Astronauts to the International Space Station, there were the "Classified" ST Missions and if you think the Russian Federation is going to allow the US to use their capabilities to do the "Classified" ST Mission, naive.).
DC already has an anti-missile system so Obama is protected. The loss of a bunch of the unwashed is just the cost of doing business. Just grow some new ones.
Hey what happens if I push this red button?
God was playing the game Rock, Paper, Scissors,,,,Rock wins!
Everyone needs to remember that we can all be wiped out within seconds. All we are is dust in the wind, none of us are that important! Gods in charge!
This event also shows how human detection systems for such events are rather worthless.
or......they just didnt wanna scare anyone......
Sees,
While Julia could also be correct your statement outlines why we need more funding for better detection equipment.
I can't believe that there are trolls on this site who actually are trying to blame Obama for this event. What are these idiots going to try to pin on him next? How about blaming Obama for darkness when the sun goes down? It makes just about as much sense.
most of the remarks I read/wrote were just kidding around.....no one who has the ability to think could possibly "blame" this on anyone.
Hmmm, Comet streaks across the sky, huge explosion in the sky and close to 1000 injured. Isn't this the start of a couple of zombie apocalypse movies? Thank goodness we still have our assault weapons to fend the zombies off! ;-)
And an emergency warning system to give you some notice when it starts...
It was a meteor, end story. What is with all of the commotion? Small rocks like this are crazy hard to detect and the meteor also entered the atmosphere coming from the opposite direction of DA14.
On a side note hopefully there will not be many casualties, but some are to be expected in this kind of event.
Well at least it reveals that physics is right when it warns us that even a modestly sized object moving at extremely high speed packs a LOT of energy. It really doesn't take much for a fairly small hunk of rubbish to cause damage when it is moving at 18 km per second.
Perhaps it will awaken the anti-science crew to the realization that space surveillance is not a waste of taxpayer dollars.
King, that is relatively slow compared to other objects in space. The Earth rotates at about 16 miles per minute. It rotates around the sun at about 1116 miles per minute.
no weapon can ever shootdown something thats not visible on radar and goes 33000 miles an hour
I hope these people are alright.
Hope all the injured people make a full recovery.
no weapon can shoot down something not visible to radar and travels 33000 miles an hour.
No doubt Obama will blame "Global Warming" for this event......
I thought that if any part of a meteoroid survives the fall through the atmosphere and lands on Earth, it is called a meteorite. So, some part of it must have landed because the news people call it a meteorite. But, in the videos the meteoroid appears only to graze the atmosphere. Maybe the news people don't know what they are talking about.
The article mentions some evidence that portions of the object may have made it to the ground. A bit shakey as evidence but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
maybe it was falling from one of China's spaceships
it's from the planet Kolab, King.....
How would you know to be in front of the meteorite with a weapon?
they are just dam lucky it went down in a lake and not in the city.
from North Korea, with Love.
why do we look into space if we can't get along on this planet? ha
People I tell you now GOD is truly warning every one of us in the world.. I know some will disagree an think I'm crazy.. only thing I'm crazy over is my LORD and SAVIOR. Please know that I'm praying for all of you... the book of Revelations is what we are living out now.. I pray for every person an every living thing on earth.. I thank my JESUS for saving me.... Please even if you don't agree,, please don't leave me any mean messages... we all have our right to speak how we feel.. Thank you JESUS for not letting any one get killed...
Hey Torch, ya never know, right? Like I said b4, wish this happened on Dec. 21, the whole planet would have freaked.
No mean messages, but I'm wondering, maybe it's just russia that's being warned.
Just sayin.
I love Jesus too btw.
You should be thanking Yours/Mine/Our Stratosphere above our Heads for It to Be Thick Enough to Generate Heat on this Celestial Object,thus Preventing This Heavenly Body from Frying Every Living Being on the Blessed Earth..Not being mean or anything but dont you think that since everyone has seen this event,do you not think that all of us are being warned?Or do you just love Jesus?
Thank God no one in Russia got antsy and pushed the red button.
How do you know what color their button is Spewer? You a commie spy or something?
I got your spewer hangin'
And it does not matter WHAT yokel town it happened in.
The button gets pushed from the command post.
Do you guys think this didn't cross someones mind?
Look at the forums.
Some people THOUGHT it was an attack.
Try to be smarter please.
Yea,just a yokel town of 1.1 MILLION people.Like New York City's a yokel town of 9 million people...Still people budd,whether you like em or not..
A tragedy if the meteor hits Russia.
A blessing if it hits idf barracks or knesset.
It gives people an idea of just how much energy is required to go to Mars in a reasonable period of time. This was a 10 ton mass traveling at approx. 33,500 mph, and the energy release was approx. equal to a 300 kiloton warhead. Only a nuclear (or thermonuclear) powered spacecraft can harness this kind of energy. (The reason why the damage was considerably less than Hiroshima or Nagasaki is because the energy was spread out over a much larger area, and over a much longer period of time.) - RC
(Also keep in mind that you must accelerate twice and decelerate twice, in the process of going to Mars. So you are really talking about 4 times the energy requirement (more or less).) - RC
Keep in mind that the total energy from the Sun hitting the Earth everyday exceeds the total energy consumed by humanity by a factor of over 20,000 times, and yet mankind is not 'blown away" by this energy release from the Sun, because this solar energy is spread out over a much larger area, and over a much longer period of time. - RC
Yea Rick,imagine if that sucker decided to airburst @ 10 to 18 000 feet..be a whole hell of a different story
Well it's close but 4K ruined vacations is still beating 1K injured by a meteor. Guess having your drinking and face stuffing interrupted by poopy smell is more identifiable. At least it's close.
Oh and before I forget
HOLY SH!T THAT WAS CLOSE! Did anybody get one of those half face sunburns like in Close Encounters? That's twice for Siberia in a hundred years. They never found a meteor from the first one...maybe it is close encounters...? OOOOHHHOOOO!
Id rather be in russia than on that horrible cruise ship.
It sure was close.....actually HIT the earth. Like I posted before, wish it had been on Dec. 21, that would have been a hoot. Would have freaked everyone on the planet out.
Maybe ET finally did phone home....
Oh, sorry. Before I get pounded by the Sheldons. I think I should have said meteorite if they were looking for it on the ground. I'm sure I'll be corrected if that's wrong. I tried. Probably just poked the bear anyway and should have just left well enough alone...but...it's just too much fun...
PLUTO IS A PLANET! bye.
Julia, OMG, can you imagine? It would have been War of the Worlds times a million. We probably would have been rid of a lot of stupid people. Problem is it's not too funny because it's probably true.
Caught that Russian satellite they de-orbitted a couple years ago. Like 5am driving to work. The whole highway came to a stop as everyone sat slack jawed watching it burn up. Amazing site! Managed to not drive home and kill myself and my whole family. Well it wasn't even close to 2012 yet and I'm not crazy...