Meteor explodes over Russia, nearly 1,000 injured

[Buster's Uncle]

Meteor explodes over Russia, nearly 1,000 injured
By JIM HEINTZ and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV | Associated Press – 25 mins ago.. .


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)


Associated Press/Nasha gazeta, www.ng.kzIn 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)


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.

http://news.yahoo.com/meteor-explodes-over-russia-nearly-1-000-injured-155343558.html

[gwillybj]

I watched 4 videos of this, 2 twice, and that explosion was huge. Over there 9:20 a.m. is like 6:00 here in the eastern U.S., and that fireball lit up their sky like it was full noon and a cloudless day. It was probably exciting and frightening at the same time, especially with the smoke trail. Some might have thought they were being attacked with missiles. Good news that the injuries were relatively minor. If it was linked to the asteroid, there might be more in the coming days.

[Buster's Uncle]

Russia Meteor Explosion: How Powerful Was It?
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."

http://news.yahoo.com/russia-meteor-explosion-powerful-173652702.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Russian meteor explosion: Spectacular dash cam video of meteorite fireball falling in Urals

Meteorite crash in Russia: Video of meteorite explosion that stirred panic in Urals region

[Buster's Uncle]

Dramatic CCTV: Meteorite blast wave blows out doors, windows in Russia

[Buster's Uncle]

Russia meteorite explosion: Zinc factory wall damaged, windows blown out

[Buster's Uncle]

Russian Meteor Shook Ground Like An Earthquake
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.

http://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-shook-ground-earthquake-175455335.html

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm not the only one who was impressed by how the Russians taping the incident kept cool:

http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/5-meteor-videos-that-prove-russians-dont-give-f2340k/?fb_action_ids=10101413921417180&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

[Buster's Uncle]

Russia Meteor Explosion: 7 Questions Answered
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.

http://news.yahoo.com/russia-meteor-explosion-7-questions-answered-211306602.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Russian Meteor Explosion Outshone Sun
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.

http://news.yahoo.com/russian-meteor-explosion-outshone-sun-235711977.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Russian region begins recovery from meteor fall
By LAURA MILLS | Associated Press – 8 mins ago.. .


 
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."

http://news.yahoo.com/russian-region-begins-recovery-meteor-fall-084058192.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Russian Fireball Highlights Asteroid Threat, Lawmaker Says
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.

http://news.yahoo.com/russian-fireball-highlights-asteroid-threat-lawmaker-says-132111833.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Weather satellite footage of Russian meteor trail from Feb. 15, 2013

[Buster's Uncle]

Russia cleans up after meteor blast injures more than 1,000
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)

http://news.yahoo.com/russia-cleans-meteor-blast-injures-more-1-000-133655941.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Meteorites from Russian Fireball Possibly Found
By Andrea Thompson | SPACE.com – 1 hr 16 mins ago.. .


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.

http://news.yahoo.com/meteorites-russian-fireball-possibly-found-161717233.html