Meteor explodes over Russia, nearly 1,000 injuredhttp://news.yahoo.com/meteor-explodes-over-russia-nearly-1-000-injured-155343558.html (http://news.yahoo.com/meteor-explodes-over-russia-nearly-1-000-injured-155343558.html)
By JIM HEINTZ and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV | Associated Press – 25 mins ago.. .
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In this photo provided by Chelyabinsk.ru a meteorite contrail is seen over Chelyabinsk on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. A meteor streaked across the sky of Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring around 100 people, including many hurt by broken glass. (AP Photo/Chelyabinsk.ru)
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Associated Press/Nasha gazeta, www.ng.kz (http://www.ng.kz)In this frame grab made from a video done with a dashboard camera, on a highway from Kostanai, Kazakhstan, to Chelyabinsk region, Russia, provided by Nasha Gazeta newspaper, on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013 a meteorite contrail is seen. A meteor streaked across the sky of Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring around 100 people, including many hurt by broken glass. (AP Photo/Nasha gazeta, www.ng.kz (http://www.ng.kz))
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In this photo provided by Chelyabinsk.ru municipal workers repair damaged electric power circuit outside a zinc factory building with about 600 square meters (6000 square feet) of a roof collapsed after a meteorite exploded over in Chelyabinsk region on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013 A meteor streaked across the sky of Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring around 100 people, including many hurt by broken glass. (AP Photo/ Oleg Kargapolov, Chelyabinsk.ru)
MOSCOW (AP) — A meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains with the power of an atomic bomb Friday, its sonic blasts shattering countless windows and injuring nearly 1,000 people.
The spectacle deeply frightened many Russians, with some elderly women declaring that the world was coming to an end. Many of the injured were cut by flying glass as they flocked to windows to see what the source was for such an intense flash of light.
The meteor — estimated to be about 10 tons — entered the Earth's atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 54,000 kph (33,000 mph) and shattered into pieces about 30-50 kilometers (18-32 miles) above the ground, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
Amateur video showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 a.m. local time, just after sunrise, leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash.
"There was panic. People had no idea what was happening," said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, a city of 1 million about 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) east of Moscow.
"We saw a big burst of light, then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud, thundering sound," he told The Associated Press by telephone.
The meteor released several kilotons of energy above the region, the science academy said. The shock wave blew in an estimated 100,000 square meters (more than 1 million square feet) of glass, according to city officials.
The meteor hit less than a day before Asteroid 2012 DA14 is to make the closest recorded pass of an asteroid to the Earth — about 17,150 miles (28,000 kilometers). But the European Space Agency in a tweet said its experts had determined there was no connection — just cosmic coincidence.
The Russian meteor was probably about 2 meters (6 ½ feet) across, about the size of an SUV, said Richard Binzel, a professor of Planetary Science at MIT.
The Interior Ministry said 985 people sought medical care after the shock wave and 44 of them were hospitalized. Most of the injuries were caused by flying glass, it said.
There was no immediate word on any deaths or anyone struck by space fragments.
Meteors typically cause sizeable sonic booms when they enter the atmosphere because they are traveling so much faster than the speed of sound. Injuries on the scale reported Friday, however, are extraordinarily rare.
"I went to see what that flash in the sky was about," recalled resident Marat Lobkovsky. "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 resident, Valya Kazakov, said some elderly women in his neighborhood started crying out that the world was ending.
Lessons had just started at Chelyabinsk schools when the meteor exploded, and officials said 204 schoolchildren were among those injured.
Yekaterina Melikhova, a high school student whose nose was bloody and whose upper lip was covered with a bandage, said she was in her geography class when they saw a bright light outside.
"After the flash, nothing happened for about three minutes. Then we rushed outdoors. I was not alone, I was there with Katya. The door was made of glass, a shock wave made it hit us," she said.
Russian television ran footage of athletes at a city sports arena who were showered by shards of glass from huge windows. Some of them were still bleeding.
City officials said 3,000 buildings in the city were damaged by the shock wave, including a zinc factory where part of the roof collapsed.
The vast implosion of glass windows exposed many residents to the bitter cold as temperatures in the city hovered around minus 9 Celsius (15.8 Fahrenheit).
The regional governor immediately urged any workers who can pane windows to rush to the area to help out.
Some fragments fell in a reservoir outside the town of Chebarkul, the regional governor's office said, according to the ITAR-Tass.
A six-meter-wide (20-foot-wide) crater was found in the same area, which could come from space fragments striking the ground, the news agency cited military spokesman Yaroslavl Roshchupkin as saying.
Small pieces of space debris — usually parts of comets or asteroids — that are on a collision course with the Earth are called meteoroids. They become meteors when they enter the Earth's atmosphere. Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere, but if they survive the frictional heating and strike the surface of the Earth they are called meteorites.
The site of Friday's spectacular show is about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) west of Tunguska, which in 1908 was the site of the largest recorded explosion of a space object plunging to Earth. That blast, attributed to a comet or asteroid fragment, is generally estimated to have been about 10 megatons; it leveled some 80 million trees.
Scientists believe that a far larger meteorite strike on what today is Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula may have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. According to that theory, the impact would have thrown up vast amounts of dust that blanketed the sky for decades and altered the climate on Earth
The panic and confusion that followed Friday's meteorite crash quickly gave way to Chelyabinsk residents' entrepreneurial instincts. Several people smashed in the windows of their houses in the hopes of receiving compensation, RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Others quickly took to the Internet and put what they said were meteorite fragments up for sale.
The Russian-language hashtags for the meteorite shot into Twitter's top trends, and the country's lively blogosphere quickly reacted with black humor.
One of the most popular jokes was that the meteorite was supposed to fall Dec. 21 last year — when many believed the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world — but was delivered late by Russia's notoriously inefficient postal service.
Others joked that the meteorite was par for the course for Chelyabinsk, an industrial town long held to be one of the world's most polluted areas. The area around Chelyabinsk is also home to nuclear and chemical weapons disposal facilities.
Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace Russia noted that the area where the meteor exploded was 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Mayak nuclear storage and disposal facility, which holds dozens of tons of weapons-grade plutonium. He said the Russian government has underestimated potential risks of the region.
A chemical weapons disposal facility at Shchuchye in the Chelyabinsk region contains some 6,000 tons (5,460 metric tons) of nerve agent including sarin and VX, accounting for about 14 percent of the chemical weapons that Russia is committed to destroy.
The dramatic events prompted an array of reactions from prominent Russians.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, speaking at an economic forum in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, said the meteor could be a symbol for the forum, showing that "not only the economy is vulnerable, but the whole planet."
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a nationalist leader noted for vehement statements, blamed the Americans.
"It's not meteors falling. It's the test of a new weapon by the Americans," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the incident showed the need for leading world powers 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.
Russia Meteor Explosion: How Powerful Was It?http://news.yahoo.com/russia-meteor-explosion-powerful-173652702.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russia-meteor-explosion-powerful-173652702.html)
By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com – 28 mins ago.. .
In a cosmic coincidence, a meteor exploded over Russia early Friday (Feb. 15) on the same day another hunk of space rock will whiz close by Earth.
NASA scientists say the two objects were on very different trajectories and are thus completely unrelated. But Russia has been bombarded before: In 1908, a piece of asteroid or comet exploded over Siberia. Had today's (Feb. 15) asteroid event been as large as that one, many more would be injured or killed.
"The phenomena are similar," said Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. "It's just that this is much smaller, and it exploded much higher up."
Explosive power
Hundreds of people, possibly 1,000, are reportedly injured after today's blast in the Chelyabinsk region, about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) east of Moscow. Most of the injuries were apparently caused by broken glass from windows that shattered in the shock wave from the fireball. [See Photos of the Russia Meteor Fireball]
Judging by the reports so far, the space rock was probably in the range of 16 feet to 33 feet (5 meters to 10 meters) in diameter, Boslough told LiveScience. That makes today's meteor a pipsqueak compared with the likely size of the 1908 event, dubbed the Tunguska event after a river near the impact site. That explosion flattened about 800 square miles (1,287 square km) of remote forest.
Both of these chunks came from the break up of asteroids and comets, which shed smaller, mostly rocky, called meteoroids that orbit the sun. Some of these fragments make their way toward Earth, burning up as they hurtle through the atmosphere, to form a meteor, or shooting star. Larger meteoroids form fireballs as they burn up and disintegrate. If a meteor survives to hit the ground, it's called a meteorite.
The Tunguska object was an estimated 130 feet (40 m) in diameter, similar to the size of the unrelated asteroid, 2012 DA14, that will come about 17,200 miles (27,700 km) from Earth at 2:24 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (19:24 GMT) today. That makes a big difference in explosive potential, Boslough said.
"A 50-meter object is 1,000 times as big in terms of explosive energy than a 5-meter object," he said.
Scientists estimate that 2012 DA14 weighs about 140,000 tons, compared to 10 tons or so for the Russian object.
A boon for science
Though it may bizarre that the Russian explosion occurred on the same day as the 2012 DA14 flyby, events like the one over Russia are not extraordinarily rare, Boslough said. There were two similarly sized events in 2009, one over Indonesia and one in South Africa, and another in 1995 over the Marshall Islands, an island country in the northern Pacific Ocean, though all were above relatively remote spots.
"If it's the size I suspect, these things happen on average every few years to every decade or so," Boslough said.
Boslough and other researchers are currently basing their estimates of the size of Friday's meteor on damage reports and YouTube videos uploaded by eyewitnesses. But the proliferation of handheld technology is likely to provide a treasure trove of data for scientists looking to understand the event. Pinpointing the spots where videos are taken and comparing the footage will help nail down the trajectory and speed of the meteor. It's even possible that iPads or other handheld devices with accelerometers recorded the shock wave as it passed, Boslough said.
"There may be other sources of data we never had in the past," he said. "I think it's pretty exciting to think about mapping out the shock wave and getting more information about this than we've ever had from any past events."
Russian Meteor Shook Ground Like An Earthquakehttp://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-shook-ground-earthquake-175455335.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-shook-ground-earthquake-175455335.html)
By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer | LiveScience.com – 33 mins ago.. .
A meteor explosion in the skies above Russia this morning also walloped the Earth, triggering shaking as strong as an earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reports.
Today's early morning blast, centered on the Chelyabinsk region, sent massive tremors through the ground, which were recorded on seismic monitoring instruments around the world.
Initial reports pegged the explosion as similar to a magnitude 2.7 shaker, according a seismograph released by the USGS. For comparison, the 1908 Tunguska meteor blast's shock waves, which flattened 80 million trees in Siberia, produced the equivalent of an estimated 5.0 temblor.
"When you have an explosion in the air, it shakes the ground, and we see it on the seismographs," explained Paul Caruso, a geophysicist at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Denver, Colo., which reported the meteor-related tremors. "It's not an earthquake, and it looks very different from the usual earthquake seismogram," he told OurAmazingPlanet.
Few meteor explosions have actually been recorded on seismographs, though, Caruso said. "We've been looking at it all morning," he added.
The meteor reportedly injured hundreds of people and damaged hundreds of buildings when it exploded in a massive blast Friday morning (Feb. 15).
Most of the injured were reportedly hurt by falling glass caused by the blast, and many have been hospitalized. In addition, an estimated 297 buildings suffered damage, including six hospitals and 12 schools, according to translations of updates by the Russian Emergency Ministry.
Scientists think a meteoroid entered the atmosphere above Russia's southern Chelyabinsk region, where it exploded and broke up into fragments scattered across three regions of Russia and Kazakhstan, according to news reports. [Photos of Russia's Meteor Fireball Blast]
The Russian meteor probably had nothing to do with the upcoming close Earth approach of asteroid 2013 DA14, which is due to make its closest approach to the Earth at 2:24 p.m. ET, Don Yeomans, head of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, told SPACE.com. The Russian meteor's trail did not travel south to north as the asteroid will.
Russia Meteor Explosion: 7 Questions Answeredhttp://news.yahoo.com/russia-meteor-explosion-7-questions-answered-211306602.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russia-meteor-explosion-7-questions-answered-211306602.html)
By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com – 26 mins ago.. .
On Friday morning (Feb.15), residents of Russia's Chelyabinsk region were shocked by a giant fireball streaking across the sky. The explosion, caused by a small meteoroid entering the atmosphere, reportedly injured hundreds as it blew out windows and sent glass flying.
Dozens of videos of the meteor trail and its aftermath quickly appeared online, and analyses of these eyewitness accounts as well as measurements from scientific instruments are giving scientists one of the best looks ever at an atmospheric meteor burst.
Here are some frequently asked questions about the meteor event and what its known so far.
1. How big was it?
Calculations are preliminary, but NASA has found this is the largest meteor since the Tunguska event in 1908, which flattened hundreds of acres of remote forest in Siberia.
The meteoroid was about 50 feet (15 meters) across before it entered Earth's atmosphere, the space agency reported. That's significantly smaller than Tunguska, which was about 130 feet (40 m) in diameter. It's also about a third the size of 2012 DA14, an asteroid that made a close pass by Earth Friday afternoon, which is likely similar in size to the Tunguska object.
A 50-foot (15-m) diameter would make the Russian meteor larger than one that streaked over Indonesia on Oct. 8, 2009, NASA reported. [See Images of the Russian Meteor Explosion]
2. Did it have anything to do with 2012 DA14?
The arrival of the Russian meteor on the day of a close flyby by asteroid 2012 DA14 is just a weird cosmic coincidence. Videos of the Russian object show it traveling north to south, NASA has found. Asteroid DA14 is traveling south to north. The different trajectories reveal that the two space rocks are completely unrelated — other than reminding Earthlings that we live in a solar system full of flying shrapnel.
3. How often does this happen?
Large meteor explosions aren't a daily occurrence, especially over populated areas, but they do happen. Meteors of this size enter the atmosphere every few years to every decade or so, said Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico who studies impacts.
"It's like shooting craps," Boslough told LiveScience. "You can go a long time without rolling a seven, and then in a short period, you roll a few. That's just the way random events work."
4. Why do meteors explode?
Asteroids are just chunks of rock, so what makes them so explosive? In a word: speed.
The kinetic energy, or energy of motion, of a speeding asteroid is enormous. The Russian meteor entered the atmosphere going 40,000 miles per hour (64,374 km per hour), Bill Cooke, lead for the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. said in a NASA press briefing.
The chunk of asteroid or comet that caused the 1908 Tunguska event is estimated to have entered the atmosphere at about 33,500 mph (53,913 km/h).
The shock wave from an asteroid's interaction with the atmosphere heats up the rock, essentially vaporizing it, Boslough said. The hot vapor then rapidly expands in the atmosphere, with explosive results.
"It's just like TNT going off, only much more energy," Boslough said.
5. What's the difference between an asteroid, a meteorite and a meteor?
The terminology surrounding near-Earth objects can be confusing. Here's a primer: Asteroids are rocky objects in space, smaller than planets. They have no atmospheres, but do exert gravitational pull, sometimes orbiting one another.
Meteors are asteroids, comet fragments or other space objects that enter Earth's atmosphere or burn up. If you've seen a shooting star, you've seen a meteor.
Meteorites are meteors that make it all the way to Earth's surface. They're tough to find. The staff of the American Museum of Natural History in New York fields multiple emails a day from people wanting to know if an odd rock they've found originated in space. In more than 17 years, only one of these supposed meteorites has panned out, a planetary science staff member recently told LiveScience.
6. Can we see asteroids coming?
Russians weren't expecting explosions in the sky on Friday morning. But there's both good news and bad news about how much we know about dangerous space rocks.
The good news is that NASA researchers have calculated the paths of at least 90 percent of near-Earth asteroids more than 0.6 miles (1 km) across — the sort that could have a humanity-ending impact. [Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth]
Smaller space rocks are more elusive, though. Astronomers have spotted only about 30 percent of asteroids 330 feet (100 m) wide that come near Earth during their orbits. Those asteroids could do a lot of damage if they entered Earth's atmosphere. And only about 1 percent of smaller rocks like 2012 DA14 are known.
At about 150 feet (45 m) wide, 2012 DA14 and its ilk are three times the size of the rock that shattered glass and injured hundreds in Russia on Friday. The Russia asteroid approached the Earth from the daytime sky, NASA's Cooke said. That made it invisible to telescopes, which can only search the night sky.
7. Will there be meteorites from the Chelyabinsk event?
It's so far unclear whether any space material made it to the ground after the meteor explosion over Russia. The Voice of Russia reported that as of midday, there had been no meteorites found. Russia Today, however, posted a photo and video to Twitter claiming to show a hole in icy Chebarkul Lake made by meteorite debris.
Russian Meteor Explosion Outshone Sunhttp://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-explosion-outshone-sun-235711977.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-explosion-outshone-sun-235711977.html)
By Miriam Kramer | SPACE.com – 1 hr 4 mins ago.. .
The fireball that exploded over Russia Friday morning (Feb. 15) provided onlookers with an incredible spectacle, even outshining the sun for a brief period, scientists say.
The meteor exploded just above the city of Chelyabinsk just before 9:30 a.m. local time, damaging hundreds of buildings and injuring more than 1,000 people. The blast probably released about 300 kilotons of energy, sending out a powerful shockwave and lighting up the daytime sky, researchers said.
"This event must have been brighter than the sun, if you were there to watch it," Paul Chodas, a scientist with the Near Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told reporters today. "It's just incredible."
The object that caused the Russian meteor was probably about 50 feet (15 meters) wide and weighed approximately 7,000 tons, said Bill Cooke of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. [See Photos of the Meteor Streaking over Russia]
This space rock exploded 12 to 15 miles (19 to 24 kilometers) above Earth's surface, releasing roughly 15 times as much energy as the atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.
The resulting blast shattered windows and knocked down walls, according to media reports.
"When you hear about injuries, those are undoubtedly due to the shockwave," Cooke said.
The fireball hit Earth's atmosphere at about 40,000 mph (64,374 kph) and left a trail 300 miles (483 kilometers) long in the sky, he added.
Although the explosion did shoot fragments of the rock toward the ground, there have been no confirmed reports of recovered pieces of the space rock, Cooke said.
Scientists have a particularly difficult time tracking small asteroids like the one that exploded earlier today because they are so small and dim. The Russian meteor was particularly difficult to spot because it came from the daylight side of the planet. Telescopes can only detect meteors in the dark, Cooke said.
Space rocks like the Russian fireball hit the Earth once every 50 to 100 years, he added.
Most asteroids are loose masses of rock, and NASA experts think this meteor probably fit that description. As the fireball entered the atmosphere, it started to break apart and eventually exploded when the heat generated by its dramatic plunge toward the Earth's surface became too great.
This is the most powerful meteor explosion of its kind since the Tunguska Event 1908, researchers said. The meteor that exploded that year over the Tunguska region of Russia's Siberia was probably 130 feet (40 m) in diameter and flattened 825 square miles (2,137 square km) of forest.
A meteor similar to today's fireball exploded in the air over Indonesia in 2009, but it didn't cause nearly this amount of damage. This most recent meteor explosion was probably four to five times more powerful than the 2009 event, Cooke said.
By coincidence, the Russian fireball exploded on the same day that the 150-foot-wide (45 m) asteroid 2012 DA14 cruised within 17,200 miles (27,000 km) of Earth. 2012 DA14's flyby was the closest by such a large asteroid that scientists have ever known about in advance. The two space rocks that made big news today are completely separate bodies, Cooke and Chodas stressed.
Russian region begins recovery from meteor fallhttp://news.yahoo.com/russian-region-begins-recovery-meteor-fall-084058192.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russian-region-begins-recovery-meteor-fall-084058192.html)
By LAURA MILLS | Associated Press – 8 mins ago.. .
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CHELYABINSK, Russia (AP) — A small army of workers set to work Saturday to replace the estimated 200,000 square meters (50 acres) of windows shattered by the shock wave from a meteor that exploded over Russia's Chelyabinsk region.
The astonishing Friday morning event blew out windows in more than 4,000 buildings in the region, mostly in the capital city of the same name and injured some 1,200 people, largely with cuts from the flying glass.
Forty of the injured remained hospitalized on Saturday, two of them in serious condition, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing the regional health ministry.
Regional governor Mikhail Yurevich on Saturday said damage from the high-altitude explosion —estimated to have been as powerful as 20 Hiroshima bombs -- is estimated at 1 billion rubles ($33 million). He promised to have all the broken windows replaced within a week.
But that is a long wait in a frigid region. The midday temperature in Chelyabinsk was minus-12 C (10 F), and for many the immediate task was to put up plastic sheeting and boards on shattered residential windows.
More than 24,000 people, including volunteers, have mobilized in the region to cover windows, gather warm clothes and food and make other relief efforts, the regional governor's office said. Crews from glass companies in adjacent regions were being flown in.
In the town of Chebarkul, 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Chelyabinsk city, divers explored the bottom of an ice-crusted lake looking for meteor fragments believed to have fallen there, leaving a six-meter-wide (20-foot-wide) hole. Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Irina Rossius told Russian news agencies the search hadn't found anything.
Police kept a small crowd of curious onlookers from venturing out onto the icy lake, where a tent was set up for the divers.
Many of them were still trying to process the memories of the strange day they'd lived through.
Valery Fomichov said he had been out for a run when the meteor streaked across the sky shortly after sunrise.
"I glanced up and saw a glowing dot in the west. And it got bigger and bigger, like a soccer ball, until it became blindingly white and I turned away," he said.
In a local church, clergyman Sexton Sergei sought to derive a larger lesson.
"Perhaps God was giving a kind of sign, so that people don't simply think about their own trifles on earth, but rather look to the heavens once in a while."
In Chelyabinsk, university student Ksenia Arslanova said she was pleased that people in the city of 1 million generally behaved well after the bewildering flash and explosions.
"People were kind of ironic about it. And that's a good thing, that people didn't run to the grocery store. Everyone was calm," the 19-year-old architecture student said. "I'm proud that our city didn't fall into depression."
Russian Fireball Highlights Asteroid Threat, Lawmaker Sayshttp://news.yahoo.com/russian-fireball-highlights-asteroid-threat-lawmaker-says-132111833.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russian-fireball-highlights-asteroid-threat-lawmaker-says-132111833.html)
By Leonard David | SPACE.com – 1 hr 32 mins ago.. .
The dramatic meteor explosion over Russia Friday (Feb. 15) highlights the need for more attention to be paid to the threat of near-Earth asteroids, an influential American congressman says.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), vice chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, responded to the Russian fireball by saying the event should serve as a wakeup call.
“We have been looking forward to the close pass of asteroid 2012 DA14, which will pass between the Earth’s surface and our communications satellites this afternoon," Rohrabacher said on Friday, referring to the 150-foot-wide (45 meters) space rock that came within just 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) of our planet that day.
"We have calculated that there is no chance this asteroid will impact the Earth, and that we will get an opportunity for a close-up view as it flies past," he added. "Unfortunately, we didn't see the one that exploded over Russia until it happened."
Rohrabacher said that the United States has been spending millions to find and track asteroids and comets, but the object that exploded over Russia was apparently so small "that we aren’t even looking for objects of this size."
Astronomers estimate that the Russian meteor was caused by a 50-foot-wide (15 m) object that weighed about 7,000 tons.
“What concerns me even more, however, is the fact that we have no plan that can protect the Earth from any comet or asteroid," Rohrabacher said. "So, even if we find one that will hit us, we might not be able to deflect it."
Change may be in the offing, however. The House science committee announced today that it will hold a hearing in the coming weeks on how to deal with the threat posed by potentially hazardous asteroids.
“This is the only preventable natural disaster, and we have mounting evidence that this a real and tangible danger,” Rohrabacher said. "Our heartfelt prayers go out to all those affected by this [Russian] event, and this shows that we must protect ourselves, and the planet, from this clear danger.
Russia cleans up after meteor blast injures more than 1,000http://news.yahoo.com/russia-cleans-meteor-blast-injures-more-1-000-133655941.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russia-cleans-meteor-blast-injures-more-1-000-133655941.html)
By Andrey Kuzmin | Reuters – 59 mins ago.. .
CHELYABINSK, Russia (Reuters) - Thousands of Russian emergency workers went out on Saturday to clear up the damage from a meteor that exploded over the Ural mountains, damaging buildings, shattering windows and showering people with broken glass.
Divers searched a lake near the city of Chelyabinsk, where a hole several feet wide had opened in the ice, but had so far failed to find any large fragments, officials said.
The scarcity of evidence on the ground fuelled scores of conspiracy theories over what caused the fireball and its huge shockwave on Friday in the area which plays host to many defense industry plants.
Nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky told reporters in Moscow it could have been "war-mongers" in the United States. "It's not meteors falling. It's a new weapon being tested by the Americans," he said.
A priest from near the explosion site called it an act of God. Social media sites were flooded with speculation about what might have caused the explosion, if not a meteorite.
"Honestly, I would be more inclined to believe that this was some military thing," said Oksana Trufanova, a local human rights activist.
Asked about the speculation, an official at the local branch of Russia's Emergencies Ministry simply replied: "Rubbish".
Residents of Chelyabinsk, an industrial city 1,500 km (950 miles) east of Moscow, heard an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt a shockwave that blew out windows and damaged the wall and roof of a zinc plant.
A fireball traveling at a speed of 30 km (19 miles) per second according to Russian space agency Roscosmos, blazed across the horizon, leaving a long white trail visible as far as 200 km (125 miles) away.
NASA estimated the meteor was 55 feet across before entering Earth's atmosphere and weighed about 10,000 tons.
It exploded miles above Earth, releasing nearly 500 kilotons of energy - about 30 times the size of the nuclear bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two, NASA added.
"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones."
DIVERS SEARCH LAKE
Search teams said they had found small objects up to about 1 cm (half-an-inch) wide that might be fragments of a meteorite, but no larger pieces.
The Chelyabinsk regional governor said the strike caused about 1 billion roubles ($33 million) worth of damage.
Life in the city had largely returned to normal by Saturday although 50 people were still in hospital. Officials said more than 1,200 people were injured, mostly by flying glass.
Repair work had to be done quickly because of the freezing temperatures, which sank close to -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) at night.
Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov inspected the damage after President Vladimir Putin sent him to the region.
His ministry is under pressure to clean up fast following criticism over the failure to issue warnings in time before fatal flooding in southern Russia last summer and over its handling of forest fires in 2010.
Putin will also want to avoid a repeat of the criticism that he faced over his slow reaction to incidents early in his first term as president, such as the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000 which killed all 118 people on board.
($1 = 30.1365 Russian roubles)
Meteorites from Russian Fireball Possibly Foundhttp://news.yahoo.com/meteorites-russian-fireball-possibly-found-161717233.html (http://news.yahoo.com/meteorites-russian-fireball-possibly-found-161717233.html)
By Andrea Thompson | SPACE.com – 1 hr 16 mins ago.. .
(http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/Meteorites_from_Russian_Fireball_Possibly-12fc92c2f80382bd11ebe245f0c3b271)
This photo released by Russia's Ural Federal University shows a small rock thought to be a meteorite from the Feb. 15, 2013, fireball that exploded over the Chelyabinsk region of Russia.
A group of Russian scientists has reported finding small meteorites from the fireball that exploded over the Chelyabinsk region in a blinding light, sending a shockwave that caused millions of dollars in damage in the city.
NASA has estimated that the Russian meteor was 55 feet (17 meters) in diameter and weighed about 10,000 tons when it entered Earth’s atmosphere on Friday (Feb. 15). The meteor was travelling 40,000 mph (64,373 km/h) when it exploded in a flash brighter than the sun.
While most of the meteor likely vaporized in the atmosphere, the rock was big enough that plenty of pieces likely fell to Earth, experts have said.
Now, scientists with the Urals Federal University announced that they had found "53 small, stony, black objects" around a lake near Chelyabinsk, Reuters reported. The lake, Lake Chebarkul, is the same one where a 20-foot-wide hole in the thick ice cover was thought to have been caused by a chunk of the meteor. [Meteor Streaks Over Russia, Explodes (Photos)]
Divers have been exploring the frigid waters, but have found no signs of meteorite fragments. Russian officials have said they think the hole was caused by something else and have shifted their focus to cleaning up from the shockwave damage, AFP has reported.
The meteor was unrelated to an asteroid, 2012 DA14, that made an extremely close flyby of Earth on Friday, passing within 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers), but never posing a threat to the planet.
Ural university scientists said that they had confirmed that the fragments they found were in fact meteorites (the term once a meteor has landed on the Earth’s surface). Tests they performed showed that they were chondrite, or stony, meteorites, the most common type of meteorite in the solar system, Reuters quoted one of the scientists as saying.
The meteorite fragments were a mere 0.2 to 0.4 inches (0.5 to 1 centimeters) across, Reuters reported.
Scientists aren't the only ones looking for meteorites from the Russian fireball. Collectors are also rushing to the region in hopes of finding chunks of the space rock.
"This is the biggest event in our lifetime," rock dealer Michael Farmer of Tucson, Ariz., told OurAmazingPlanet, a sister site to SPACE.com, on Friday. "It's very exciting scientifically and for collecting, and luckily, it looks like there will be plenty of it."
Farmer said he's planning to leave for Russia as soon as possible. "I wouldn't miss this for the world," he said.
Purported pieces of the meteorite began appearing on eBay hours after the meteor blast, though experts said those were likely fakes. Just how much any actual chunks of the meteorite will fetch will depend on how rare the pieces are and the type and origin of the meteorite, Farmer said.
Russia Meteor Blast Was Largest Detected by Nuclear Monitoring Systemhttp://news.yahoo.com/russia-meteor-blast-largest-detected-nuclear-monitoring-system-224151086.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russia-meteor-blast-largest-detected-nuclear-monitoring-system-224151086.html)
By Leonard David | SPACE.com – 32 mins ago.. .
A far-flung system of detectors that make up a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty network made its largest ever detection when a meteor exploded over Russia’s Ural mountains last week.
The Vienna, Austria-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) runs the International Monitoring System made up of infrasound stations. Infrasound is low frequency sound with a range of less than 10 Hertz. Humans cannot hear the low frequency waves that were emitted by the meteor blast over Russia on Friday (Feb. 15), but they were recorded by the CTBTO’s network of sensors as they travelled across continents.
When the space rock detonated, the blast was detected by 17 infrasound stations in the CTBTO’s network that track atomic blasts across Earth. The furthest station to record the sub-audible sound was some 9,320 miles (15,000 kilometers) away in Antarctica.
Huge infrasound event
Prior to the Russian meteor event, the largest infrasound event registered by 15 stations in the CTBTO’s network was the October 2009 meteor explosion (called a bolide) over Sulawesi, Indonesia. [See video of the intense meteor explosion]
In a CTBTO statement discussing the Russian bolide, Pierrick Mialle, an acoustic scientist for the group said: "We saw straight away that the event would be huge, in the same order as the Sulawesi event from 2009. The observations are some of the largest that CTBTO's infrasound stations have detected."
The Russian meteor blast picked up by the detectors is not a single explosion, Mialle said. Rather, it is burning, traveling faster than the speed of sound. "That's how we distinguish it from mining blasts or volcanic eruptions," he said.
Mialle said that scientists around the world will be using the CTBTO's data to better gauge the object's breakup and discern more about the object's final altitude, energy released and how the meteor disintegrated.
Micropressure changes
There are currently 45 infrasound stations in the CTBTO's network that measure micropressure changes in the atmosphere generated by infrasonic waves. Infrasound is one of the technologies used in the CTBTO’s network of sensors to monitor the globe for violations of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty that bans all nuclear explosions.
Infrasound has been used as part of the CTBTO's tools to detect atomic blasts since April 2001 when the first station came online in Germany. Data from the stations is sent in near real time to Vienna, Austria, for analysis at the CTBTO’s headquarters. Both the raw and analyzed data are provided to all Member States of the CTBTO.
CTBTO Member States have spent $1 billion on setting up the CTBTO verification regime.
Just days before the meteor explosion over Russia, the CTBTO's seismic network detected a seismic event in North Korea. That event on Feb. 12 measured 4.9 in magnitude. Later that morning, North Korean officials announced that the country had conducted a nuclear test. The event was registered by 94 seismic stations and two infrasound stations in the CTBTO's network.
Russian Meteor's Origin and Size Pinned Downhttp://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteors-origin-size-pinned-down-115545347.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteors-origin-size-pinned-down-115545347.html)
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com – 7 hrs ago.. .(http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/Russian_Meteor%27s_Origin_and_Size-1dffa5b67e72f90f304ce55fe2341fe4)
The orbits of the Russian meteor and Asteroid 2012 DA14 are nothing alike meaning they are not related.
A meteor that exploded over Russia earlier this month likely hit Earth after a long trip from beyond the orbit of Mars, scientists say.
Astronomers and the public were caught off guard by the Russian fireball, which damaged thousands of buildings and wounded more than 1,000 people when it detonated over the city of Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15.
But some YouTube-aided detective work suggests that the meteor's parent body belonged to the Apollo family of Earth-crossing asteroids, whose elliptical orbits take them farther than one Earth-sun distance (about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers) from our star at some point, researchers said.
Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin of the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, reached this conclusion after analyzing several videos of the Russian meteor, especially one taken in Chelyabinsk's Revolutionary Square and another recorded in the nearby city of Korkino. [Russian Fireball: All You Need to Know (Video)]
They also took into account the location of a hole in the ice of Lake Chebarkul, about 43 miles (70 km) from Chelyabinsk. Scientists think the hole was caused by a piece of the space rock that hit Earth on Feb. 15.
Using trigonometry, Zuluaga and Ferrin calculated basic elements of the fireball's path through Earth's atmosphere.
"According to our estimations, the Chelyabinski meteor started to brighten up when it was between 32 and 47 km up in the atmosphere," they write in their paper, which has been posted to the online astronomy preprint site ArXiv.org. "The velocity of the body predicted by our analysis was between 13 and 19 km/s (relative to the Earth) which encloses the preferred figure of 18 km/s assumed by other researchers."
The pair then entered these figures into a software program developed by the United States Naval Observatory called NOVAS (short for Naval Observatory Vector Astrometry), which calculated the likely orbit of the meteor's parent body.
Some other scientists agree that this orbit took the space rock relatively far from the sun at times — farther than Mars, in fact.
"It came from the asteroid belt, about 2.5 times farther from the sun than Earth," Bill Cooke, of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said in a statement. Cooke was not involved in Zuluaga and Ferrin's study.
Meanwhile, the size of the meteor's parent object has come into clearer focus, thanks to measurements made by a global network of infrasound sensors operated by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). These sensors monitor extremely low-frequency sound waves, which are a common product of nuclear explosions.
As the Russian meteor burned through Earth's atmosphere, it generated the most powerful infrasound signal ever detected by the CTBTO network, researchers said. And this signal revealed a great deal about the asteroid's size, speed and explosive power.
"The asteroid was about 17 meters in diameter and weighed approximately 10,000 metric tons," Peter Brown, a physics professor at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, said in a statement. "It struck Earth's atmosphere at 40,000 mph and broke apart about 12 to 15 miles above Earth's surface. The energy of the resulting explosion exceeded 470 kilotons of TNT."
That's 30 to 40 times more powerful than the atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II. The Russian fireball likely produced the most powerful such space rock blast since a 130-foot (40 m) object exploded over Siberia in 1908, flattening 825 square miles (2,137 square km) of forest.
Preliminary reports suggest that the Chelyabinsk fireball's parent asteroid was composed primarily of stone, with a smidge of iron thrown in.
"In other words, [it's] a typical asteroid from beyond the orbit of Mars," Cooke said. "There are millions more just like it."
The Russian meteor struck just hours before the 130-foot asteroid 2012 DA14 gave Earth a close shave, missing our planet by just 17,200 miles (27,000 km). But the two space rocks are unrelated, researchers say, making Feb. 15 a day of remarkable cosmic coincidences.
You can see the Arxiv paper on the Russian meteor here (http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=ApDwbtaTkKEYoBU1dKNu.fusFWFH;_ylu=X3oDMTFqZG1vZW1rBG1pdANBcnRpY2xlIEJvZHkEcG9zAzcEc2VjA01lZGlhQXJ0aWNsZUJvZHlBc3NlbWJseQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTNuNjhrbm9wBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDYmI3NTE5ZWEtMWU3NC0zZDQ2LTg5OTQtOTZhNTI3ZWI0ZWYyBHBzdGNhdANzY2llbmNlfHNwYWNlLWFzdHJvbm9teQRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2UEdGVzdANRRV9UZXN0;_ylv=0/SIG=11iprk1c4/EXP=1363203827/**http%3A//arxiv.org/abs/1302.5377).
NASA Fireball Website Launches with New Russian Meteor Explosion Detailshttp://news.yahoo.com/nasa-fireball-website-launches-russian-meteor-explosion-details-140510993.html (http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-fireball-website-launches-russian-meteor-explosion-details-140510993.html)
By Leonard David | SPACE.com – 3 hrs ago.. .
NASA has launched a new website to share details of meteor explosion events as recorded by U.S. military sensors on secretive spacecraft, kicking off the project with new details of last month's fireball over Chelyabinsk, Russia.
The new "Fireball and Bolide Reports" website, overseen by NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, debuted Friday (March 1) with its first entry: a table with a chronological data summary of the Russian meteor explosion of Feb. 15 gleaned from U.S. Government sensor data. Scientists are calling the event a "superbolide," taken from the term "bolide" typically used for fireballs created by meteors.
Sharing the information publicly is part of a renewed collaboration between the U.S. military and the scientific community.
"And what better way to kick this site off than the Chelyabinsk superbolide … the most energetic recognized-fireball event since Tunguska in 1908," said Don Yeomans, a senior research scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He is also manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL.
"This website is meant to be the vehicle for future reports of fireballs/bolides as seen by U.S. government sensors," Yeomans told SPACE.com. "This is the first posting of its kind on this site. Future data on bright fireballs will be added to this table. We won't capture every fireball event … only the unusually bright ones," he said.
"I consider this a major step forward since these fireball events are by far the most frequent impactors into the Earth's atmosphere," Yeomans said. "And these reports will go a long way toward defining the annual flux of small Earth impactors." [Russian Meteor Explosion Explained (Infographic)]
New Russian meteor details
The Feb. 15 Russian meteor event is the first entry on this new site, and it provides the following information about the fireball:
Time of maximum brightness:
03:20:33 GMT on Feb. 15
Geographic location of maximum brightness:
Latitude: 54.8 deg. N
Longitude: 61.1 deg. E
Altitude of maximum brightness:
23.3 km (14.5 miles)
Velocity at peak brightness:
18.6 km/s (11.6 miles/s)
Approximate total radiated energy of fireball:
3.75 x 1014 Joules. This is the equivalent of about 90 kilotons of TNT explosives, but it does not represent the total impact energy, which is several times larger than the observed total radiated energy.
Approximate total impact energy of the fireball in kilotons of TNT explosives (the energy parameter usually quoted for a fireball):
440 kilotons.
New fireball agreement
This public release of government detector data was made possible by a newly signed memorandum of agreement (MOA) between NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and Headquarters Air Force Space Command Air, Space and Cyberspace Operations Directorate.
The MOA was signed on Jan. 18, said Capt. Chris Sukach, spokesperson for U.S. Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. For security reasons, the actual MOA is classified, she told SPACE.com.
As a result of the agreement, Sukach said, NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Program is receiving information on bolide/fireball events based on analysis of data collected by U.S. Government sensors.
"Data on the recent Chelyabinsk event has been released," Sukach said.
Sukach added that when Air Force Space Command receives data on bolide events, it pushes that data to the NASA Near Earth Object Office. "From then on, it is a NASA-owned process, but our understanding is NASA distributes the information via the publically-accessible Near Earth Object Office website to assist the scientific community’s investigation of bolides," she said.
Relatively small asteroid
According to Don Yeomans and Paul Chodas, also of the NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program office, the Russian fireball was technically a "superbolide" that was observed on the morning of Feb. 15 in the skies near Chelyabinsk, Russia.
The object was a relatively small asteroid, approximately 55 to 65 feet (17 to 20 meters) in size. As it roared through the Earth's atmosphere at high speed and a shallow angle, the asteroid released a huge amount of energy. The object broke apart at high altitude, producing a shower of pieces of various sizes that fell to the ground as meteorites. [Russian Meteor Fragments Found (Video)]
"The fireball was observed not only by video cameras and low-frequency infrasound detectors, but also by U.S. Government sensors," Yeomans and Chodas said. "As a result, the details of the impact have become clearer. There is no connection between the Russian fireball event and the close approach of asteroid 2012 DA14, which occurred just over 16 hours later."
Congress wants to know about NEOs
Congressional action on NEOs for this year, spurred in part by the Russian event, was initially slated kick off on March 6 during a House subcommittee hearing, but the meeting was postponed due to weather concerns. The meeting is now scheduled for Tuesday, March 19.
The full committee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is expected to hold a multi-panel hearing on "Threats from Space: a Review of U.S. Government Efforts to Track and Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors."
Slated to testify on one panel is John Holdren, White House science officer; General William Shelton, commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command; and Charles Bolden, NASA's chief.
More info: NASA's Fireball and Bolide Reports website (http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=Ar8dTiQGHth_BQEbJElupeCRxLEF;_ylu=X3oDMTFqZTJrMXNoBG1pdANBcnRpY2xlIEJvZHkEcG9zAzgEc2VjA01lZGlhQXJ0aWNsZUJvZHlBc3NlbWJseQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTNuaGhlbTl0BGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDNGQ4ZGMwMjYtNmJhNy0zYzVlLTk1YzYtYzg1M2FkYmU2NjVjBHBzdGNhdANzY2llbmNlfHNwYWNlLWFzdHJvbm9teQRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2UEdGVzdANRRV9UZXN0;_ylv=0/SIG=11lufvjof/EXP=1364492626/**http%3A//neo.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs).
Meteor Over Manhattan: East Coast Fireball Sets Internet Abuzzhttp://news.yahoo.com/meteor-over-manhattan-east-coast-fireball-sets-internet-052545019.html (http://news.yahoo.com/meteor-over-manhattan-east-coast-fireball-sets-internet-052545019.html)
By Tariq Malik | SPACE.com – 11 hrs ago...(http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/Meteor_Over_Manhattan_East_Coast-7947337ff1966ec2055d20a0aced8735)
A bright meteor briefly outshined the lights of New York City Friday evening (March 22), according to reports by witnesses who used Twitter and the Internet to report sightings of the fireball streaking over a broad stretch of the U.S. East Coast.
"Strange Friday night … a meteor passed over my house tonight!" wrote one New Yorker writing as Yanksmom19.
The first fireball sightings came at about 8 p.m. EDT (0000 March 23 GMT) and sparked more than 500 witness reports to the American Meteor Society. Reports of the meteor flooded Twitter from New York, Boston and Washington, D.C.
"The witnesses range from along the Atlantic Coast ranging from Maine to North Carolina," Robert Lunsford, the society's fireball coordinator, wrote in an update. "This object was also seen as far inland as Ohio." [5 Amazing Fireball Videos]
The CBS WUSA 9 television news station obtained several security camera videos of the fireball as it lit up the night sky over Washington and parts of Maryland.
In New York, some observers reported seeing the meteor low in the sky as it streaked from west to east across the night sky.
"It shot over Manhattan and broke up over the East Village," observer Ross E. of New York City wrote in his fireball report to the meteor society. In fact, the meteor streaked across hundreds of miles and was visible from many states along the Eastern Seaboard.
According to Lunsford, meteors often appear closer than they actually are due to the observer's perspective.
Fireballs occur every day and are typically caused by small space rocks about the size of a basketball disintegrating as they streak through Earth's atmosphere, officials with NASA's Asteroid Watch outreach program wrote in a Twitter post.
On Feb. 15, a bus-size meteor exploded over Russia near the city of Chelyabinsk, shattering windows in hundreds of buildings and injuring nearly 1,500 people. That rare meteor explosion, which scientists have classified as a superbolide, was the most powerful in more than a century, NASA scientists said.
The Earth is bombarded by nearly 100 tons of material from space every day, but most of those objects are tiny dust grains that burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere.
NASA scientists and astronomers around the world regularly monitor the night sky for signs of larger asteroids that could pose an impact threat to Earth. Friday night's meteor came just days after back-to-back hearings in the House and Senate about the dangers posed by near-Earth asteroids. Those meetings were scheduled in the wake of the Feb. 15 Russian meteor explosion.
Editor's note: If you snapped an amazing photo of the East Coast meteor or any other night sky sight and you'd like to share it for a possible story or image gallery, please send images and comments, including location information, to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at [email protected].
Russian Meteor Fallout: Boosting Asteroid Search May Not Help, Scientist Sayshttp://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-fallout-boosting-asteroid-search-may-not-182600221.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-fallout-boosting-asteroid-search-may-not-182600221.html)
By Miriam Kramer | SPACE.com – 19 hrs ago...
Spending more money on asteroid and meteor detection techniques won't necessarily make the planet safer, according to a planetary scientist.
Alexander Deutsch, a professor of planetology at the University of Münster in Germany, explained that the relatively small meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February would not have been detected using technologies available around the world today.
"The problem is that even if they use more of these highly sophisticated observatories, they will not find very small projectiles, but on the other hand, the small projectiles are not very dangerous, and the opinion is that the larger ones or at least most of the larger ones are now known," Deutsch said during a news conference today (April 9) at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna. "I don't think more money will produce more data."
This idea is contrary to what many scientists, lawmakers and public officials have been saying since the Feb. 15 explosion of the 56-to-66-foot meteor (17 to 20 meters) space rock over Russia's Ural Mountains. [See photos of the Russian meteor explosion]
The Russian fireball's blast injured more than 1,000 people, and sparked a series of congressional hearings on asteroid detection in the United States to assess the possible threats posed by asteroids and meteors.
NASA also estimates that scientists and amateur astronomers working with the space agency have located and tracked the orbits of 90 percent of the largest near-Earth asteroids that could create a global crisis if the space rocks were to impact the planet.
Although the asteroid released the equivalent of 470 kilotons of TNT (30 to 40 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II), the 10,000-metric-ton meteor exploded high enough to shelter those on the ground from the brunt of its impact.
"What you see now is it doesn't matter if it's Chelyabinsk or London," Deutsch said. "If you have, let's say, good windows and solid structure and [the meteor] exploding very high, then the damage is rather small."
Deutsch also pointed out that these events are somewhat rare. Scientists have suggested that a meteor like the one that fell through the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk is expected to happen only once every 50 to 100 years. Before this year, the last meteor that produced such a blast fell over Siberia in 1908, flattening 825 square miles (2,137 square km) of forest.
The Russian meteor exploded just before another space rock flew harmlessly past the Earth. Asteroid 2012 DA14 — a 130-foot (40 m) rock — gave the Earth a close shave in astronomical terms, missing the planet's surface by 17,200 miles (27,000 km). The two space rocks, however, were cosmically unrelated.
Russian Meteor Explosion's Dust Cloud Lingered In Atmosphere for Monthshttp://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-explosions-dust-cloud-lingered-atmosphere-months-102134982.html (http://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-explosions-dust-cloud-lingered-atmosphere-months-102134982.html)
SPACE.com
Elizabeth Howell 13 hours ago(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/OmcCMhEhWthJvfYPSAaMGQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTMyMztweW9mZj0wO3E9ODU7dz01NzU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/Russian_Meteor_Explosion%27s_Dust_Cloud-192b40765b6d0e666c537a2510f6fd23)
A portion of Chelyabinsk's dust plume circled Earth in just four days, as shown in this image
When a meteor exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February, pieces of the bus-sized space rock hit the ground while its detonation shattered windows, set off car alarms and injured more than 1,000 people.
Masked in the chaos, however, was an enormous plume of dust that the Russian meteor left behind in Earth's atmosphere. This cloud, which had hundreds of tons of material in it, was still lingering three months after the Feb. 15 explosion, a new study has found. Scientists created a video of the Russian meteor explosion's dust cloud to illustrate the phenomenon.
"Thirty years ago, we could only state that the plume was embedded in the stratospheric jet stream," Paul Newman, chief scientist for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's atmospheric science lab, said in a statement. "Today, our models allow us to precisely trace the bolide and understand its evolution as it moves around the globe."
Chasing dust
The Russian meteor, which weighed 11,000 metric tons when it hit the atmosphere, detonated about 15 miles (24 kilometers) above Chelyabinsk. The explosion sent out a burst of energy 30 times greater than the atom bomb that leveled Hiroshima during World War II.
Some of the asteroid's remnants crashed to the ground, but hundreds of tons of dust remained in the atmosphere. A team led by NASA Goddard atmospheric physicist Nick Gorkavyi, who is from Chelyabinsk, wondered if it was possible to track the cloud using NASA's Suomi NPP satellite.
"Indeed, we saw the formation of a new dust belt in Earth's stratosphere, and achieved the first space-based observation of the long-term evolution of a bolide plume," Gorkavyi said in a statement.
Initial measurements 3.5 hours after the meteor explosion showed the dust 25 miles (40 km) high in the atmosphere, speeding east at 190 mph (306 km/h).
Russian officials were still cleaning up in Chelyabinsk when, four days after the explosion, the higher portion of the plume reached all the way around Earth's northern hemisphere. Even three months into the study, Suomi still saw a "detectable belt" of dust circling the globe, researchers said.
Putting it in perspective
Tracking the plume also revealed some insights into how particles behave in Earth's atmosphere. Heavier particles, for example, moved more slowly as they dropped closer to Earth in an area with lower wind speeds. Lighter particles maintained speed and altitude, consistent with predictions of wind velocities at their heights.
While the plume was easily detectable, it was by no means extraordinarily dense, NASA researchers noted. About 30 metric tons of space dust hits the Earth every day on average. Also, volcanoes and other natural Earth sources contribute far greater numbers of particles to the stratosphere.
The study is ongoing, with potential research directions including looking at whether or not meteor debris can affect cloud formation in the stratosphere and mesosphere.
A paper based on the work so far has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
"About 30 metric tons of space dust hits the Earth every day on average."
(I may need to make a 'caught being a condescending [male member]' smilie - I'd get some use of one. :-[ )
How about having female members showing a female SMAC(X) citizen icon instead of a male one? At least when in the initial stages of their stay here (lower post count)?I could create a "Female Woman" (or something) membergroup, and do an icon as you say, but I don't have server access to install the icon, else I'd have had some fun with it when I started throwing people into novelty membergroups.
;lol
Winter Olympic Gold Medalists to Get Bonus Meteorite Medal Saturdayhttp://news.yahoo.com/winter-olympic-gold-medalists-bonus-meteorite-medal-saturday-121624146.html (http://news.yahoo.com/winter-olympic-gold-medalists-bonus-meteorite-medal-saturday-121624146.html)
SPACE.com
By Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com 9 hours ago
(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/fhQzuRgDPmB3lJ..bh41Cg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM4MTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz01NzU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/Winter_Olympic_Gold_Medalists_to-6ea7f938589179f4ae073b09d2fbcef4)
Olympic athletes placing gold on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014 at the Sochi Winter Games will be conferred a bonus medal adorned with a fragment of the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteorite.
What is better than winning gold at the Olympics? Winning gold at the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia on Saturday (Feb. 15) — because on that day, and that day alone, earning a gold medal also means being awarded a piece of a rock that fell from space.
Saturday marks exactly one year since a small near-Earth asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere over Russia and exploded over the Chelyabinsk Oblast (region). Regarded as the most widely witnessed asteroid strike in modern history, the Chelyabinsk meteor was also the largest recorded natural object to have fallen from space since 1908.
The space rock broke into hundreds, if not thousands, of small fragments, which rained down over the area's snow-covered fields. Over the past year, many fragments of the Chelyabinsk meteorite have been recovered, with some of the pieces heading to labs for study, many landing on the collectors' market, others going to museums and a small set being placed aside for a special set of medallions.
Ten of those medals will be presented to those who place gold at the Sochi 2014 Olympics on the anniversary of the Chelyabinsk meteor fall.
"We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day [Feb. 15], because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are global events," Alexei Betekhtin, culture minister for the Chelyabinsk region, in a statement.
In total, 50 of the meteorite-adorned medallions have been minted. In addition to the those that will be awarded to the Olympic committees of those nations whose athletes win gold medals Saturday, one is being given to the regional Chelyabinsk museum, another will stay in Sochi and the remainder will be offered to private collections.
The medallions, which were crafted out of gold and silver, feature a design that was inspired by the footage of the meteor's fall as captured by car-mounted dash cams. The videos from that day quickly went viral, shared across the planet by social media.
The meteorite pieces are affixed in a small indentation at the center of the medals.
The meteorite medals are not replacing the Olympic gold medals awarded to athletes on Saturday, contrary to some media reports. The Chelyabinsk medals will be presented to the athletes separately and not as part of the traditional podium ceremony.
The 10 meteorite-embedded awards will be bestowed to the gold medal athletes competing in speedskating (men's 1500), short-track speedskating (women's 1000 and men's 1500), cross-country skiing (women's relay), ski jumping (men's K-125), Alpine skiing (women's super giant slalom) and skeleton (men's) events.
Today, small fragments (2 to 3 grams) of the Chelyabinsk meteorite sell for $50 to $75. Larger fragments (between 5 and 10 grams) typically sell for $200 and above.
The shock wave from the meteor damaged thousands of buildings in the Chelyabinsk Oblast, resulting in more than 1,500 people seeking medical help. Injuries ranged from cuts due to shattered glass windows, eye pain due to the brightness of the flash, ultraviolet burns and, in one of two serious injuries reported, a broken spine.
The damage from the meteor explosion was estimated by the oblast's governor to be more than one billion rubles (or about $33 million US).
Chelyabinsk "was the first asteroid-impact disaster in human history,"...
Chelyabinsk asteroid crashed in space before hitting Earth: scientistshttp://news.yahoo.com/chelyabinsk-asteroid-crashed-space-hitting-earth-scientists-194132305.html (http://news.yahoo.com/chelyabinsk-asteroid-crashed-space-hitting-earth-scientists-194132305.html)
Reuters
By Irene Klotz May 23, 2014 3:41 PM
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The trail of a falling object is seen above a residential apartment block in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, in this still image taken from video shot on February 15, 2013. REUTERS/OOO Spetszakaz
CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. (Reuters) - An asteroid that exploded last year over Chelyabinsk, Russia, leaving more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris, collided with another asteroid before hitting Earth, new research by scientists shows.
Analysis of a mineral called jadeite that was embedded in fragments recovered after the explosion show that the asteroid's parent body struck a larger asteroid at a relative speed of some 3,000 mph (4,800 kph).
"This impact might have separated the Chelyabinsk asteroid from its parent body and delivered it to the Earth," lead researcher Shin Ozawa, with the University of Tohoku in Japan, wrote in a paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports.
The discovery is expected to give scientists more insight into how an asteroid may end up on a collision course with Earth. Scientists suspect the collision happened about 290 million years ago.
Most of the 65-foot (20-meter) wide asteroid that blazed over Chelyabinsk in southwestern Siberia on Feb. 15, 2013, was incinerated in a bright fireball, the result of frictional heating as it dropped through the atmosphere at 42,000 mph (67,600 kph). But many small fragments survived.
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Workers repair damage caused after a meteorite passed above the Urals city of Chelyabinsk February 15, 2013. REUTERS/Yevgeni Yemeldinov
The asteroid was traveling almost 60 times the speed of sound and exploded about 18 miles (30 km) above ground with a force nearly 30 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945 in World War Two.
The blast over Chelyabinsk caused shock waves that destroyed buildings and shattered windows. More than 1,000 people were injured by flying debris.
Analysis of recovered Chelyabinsk meteorites revealed an unusual form of jadeite entombed inside glassy materials known as shock veins, which form after rock crashes, melts and re-solidifies.
Jadeite, which is one of the minerals in the gemstone jade, forms only under extreme pressure and high temperature. The form of jadeite found in the Chelyabinsk meteorites indicates that the asteroid’s parent body hit another asteroid that was at least 492 feet (150 meters) in diameter.
Scientists are still analyzing fragments of the asteroid and calculating its precise path toward Earth.
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A Russian policeman works near an ice hole, said by the Interior Ministry department for Chelyabinsk region to be the point of impact of a meteorite seen earlier in the Urals region, at lake Chebarkul some 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Chelyabinsk February 15, 2013. REUTERS/Chelyabinsk region Interior Ministry/Handout
In an email to Reuters, Ozawa described the Chelyabinsk meteorite as "a unique sample.”
"It is a near-Earth object that actually hit the Earth, and its trajectory was well-recorded,” Ozawa wrote.
The Chelyabinsk asteroid caused the second most powerful explosion in recorded history. In 1908, a suspected asteroid exploded with a force about 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, leveling some 80 million trees over 772 square miles (2,000 square km) near Russia’s Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia.
The first possible meteorites from the so-called Tunguska event were recovered just last year. Results have not yet been published.
(Editing by Grant McCool)
3 Meteorites from 2013 Space Rock Explosion Over Russia for Salehttp://www.space.com/27049-russian-meteorite-fragments-for-auction.html (http://www.space.com/27049-russian-meteorite-fragments-for-auction.html)
SPACE.COM
By Megan Gannon, News Editor | September 06, 2014 08:09am ET
(http://i.space.com/images/i/000/041/908/original/russian-meteorite.jpeg?1409955394)
A fragments of the Feb. 15, 2013, Russian meteorite will hit the auction block this month. Credit: Heritage Auctions
When a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia on Feb. 15, 2013, many of world's most avid meteorite collectors were gathered on the other side of the world, in Arizona, at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.
"A lot of the meteorite guys were scrambling to leave the show early to go to Russia," said Craig Kissick of Heritage Auctions.
Chunks of the meteorite that lay scattered in the snow in central Russia made it to the commercial market just months after the blast. A few fragments were even incorporated into some gold medals given out at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. This month, Heritage Auctions is selling three pieces of the Chelyabinsk space rock as part of its latest natural history sale.
The meteor blast produced a shockwave that shattered windows and injured more than 1,000 people in Chelyabinsk region. Scientists who have analyzed samples of the Chelyabinsk meteorite have said it appears to be an ordinary chondrite, the most common type of meteorite found on Earth.
"I wouldn't consider it that attractive," Kissick said, but the fragments have stirred up interest among collectors because they are tied to the biggest meteorite blast in more than a century, and perhaps the most witnessed one on record.
Opening bids for the three Chelyabinsk meteorite fragments start at $500, $2,500 and $4,000. The sale will take place on Sept. 28 at Heritage Auction's Nature and Science Signature Auction in Dallas, Texas.