Record Meteorite Hits Norway

equex256 writes "Early Wednesday morning, a meteorite streaked across the sky in northern Norway, near Finland and Russia. A witness (Article in Norwegian) went up the mountain to where it hit and reported seeing large boulders that had fallen out of the mountainside, along with many broken trees. Norwegian astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard told Aftenposten, Norway's largest newspaper, that he would compare the explosive force of the impact with the Hiroshima bomb. This meteorite is suspected to be much larger than the 90-kilo (198-pound) meteorite which hit Alta in 1904, previously recognized as the largest to hit Norway. From the article: 'Røed Ødegaard said the meteorite was visible to an area of several hundred kilometers despite the brightness of the midnight sunlit summer sky. The meteorite hit a mountainside in Reisadalen in North Troms.'"

Comments

Re:Is this real?

[49152]

Yes, it's real. The impact also showed up on seismic recorders http://www.astro.uio.no/ita/nyheter/ildkule06/ildk ule06.html (You can study the images in this Norwegian article from the University of Oslo).

It's how you distribute the energy.

[DigiShaman]

There is a difference in how the energy was distributed. With the A-Bomb, it was an atmospheric blast. With the space rock, the energy was absorbed into the Earths crust.

Re:Obligatory Meteor Video

[ACDChook]

And for all you language nazis out there, meteorite is a silly word and should be abolished.

I think you'll find that by definition, an object is a meteor while it falls through the atmosphere, and the rock that hits the ground is a meteorite. If it burns up in the atmosphere, then there is no meteorite, just a short-lived meteor.

Re:Obligatory Meteor Video

[morcego]

Actually, you are right:

Metoroid -> Atmosphere -> Meteor -> Ground -> Meteorite