Earth at Higher Risk of Asteroid Impact, Russian Meteor Explosion Reveals

[onehandle]

Source: Space



The risk of asteroid impacts like the meteor explosion that devastated a Russian city earlier this year may be 10 times greater than previously thought, several new studies on the meteor's origin and power reveal.

The meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15 was the first video-recorded meteor known to cause substantial damage and injuries. It was the largest airburst on the planet since the famed Tunguska event in 1908, also in Russia. Divers recovered a coffee-table-size chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteoriteweighing about 1,430 pounds (650 kilograms), the largest fragment unearthed yet, from the bottom of Russia's Lake Chebarkul on Oct. 16. Satellites also watched it streak through the atmosphere.

To learn more about the Chelyabinsk meteor, research teams visited more than 50 villages in the region and investigated hundreds of videos people recorded of the meteor, often through vehicle dash-cams and security cameras. This helped them reconstruct its path and the damage the airburst caused. [Meteor Streaks Over Russia, Explodes (Photos)]

"It was amazing to see the damage done by an asteroid impact firsthand," said Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer at NASA Ames Center and the SETI Institute, and co-author of one study on the Chelyabinsk event detailed online Nov. 7 in the journal Science."You could tell it really made a deep impression on people there."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/earth-higher-risk-asteroid-impact-russian-meteor-explosion-182724668.html

[ErikJ]

1. Russian Meteor's Air Blast Was One for the Record Books

Geez I never realized it was 65 ft wide!!!

Russian Meteor's Air Blast Was One for the Record Books
-National Geographic


Published by the journals Science and Nature, the three related analyses combine data from satellites, seismometers, dashboard cameras, damage surveys, and asteroid fragments to look at the Chelyabinsk event.


In the studies, the international impact teams re-created the roughly 65-foot-wide (20-meter-wide) asteroid's 42,500 mile-per-hour (68,400 kilometer-per-hour) collision with Earth's atmosphere.


The event injured about 1,500 people and damaged thousands of buildings in a part of central Russia that is home to one million people. (See "Russian Meteorite's Fiery Entry Captured by Satellites.&quot


"Some witnesses reported being burned by the light," says Science study co-author Peter Jenniskens of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.


"Not just the windows were broken, but the window frames were pushed in, in the buildings," said Jenniskens in a Science podcast. "The [shockwave] was so strong that it was able to topple over people standing."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131106-russian-meteor-chelyabinsk-airburst-500-kilotons/

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

2. Great,

one more thing to worry about!!

[William Seger]

3. One IMPORTANT thing to learn from that...

Last edited Thu Nov 7, 2013, 11:20 AM - Edit history (1)

... is that most of the injuries were from flying glass when people rushed to windows to see what caused the bright flash, but the shock wave arrived well after the flash because of the distance.

[navarth]

4. Thanks Obama!!

Sorry I just had to.

[ZombieHorde]

5. Ha! nt

[MicaelS]

6. We're lucky it was not a Nickel-Iron asteroid.

If it was, it would have probably stayed intact, hit the ground, and formed a huge crater, with devastation to the surrounding areas. Or even worse it might have hit Chelyabinsk directly and killed a lot of people, and probably destroying much of the city.