Huge Meteor Blazes Across Sky Over Russia; Hundreds Injured

New submitter dovf writes "The Bad Astronomer analyzes incoming reports about the apparent meteoric fireball over Russia: 'Apparently, at about 09:30 local time, a very big meteor burned up over Chelyabinsk, a city in Russia just east of the Ural mountains, and about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow. The fireball was incredibly bright, rivaling the Sun! There was a pretty big sonic boom from the fireball, which set off car alarms and shattered windows. I'm seeing some reports of many people injured (by shattered glass blown out by the shock wave). I'm also seeing reports that some pieces have fallen to the ground, but again as I write this those are unconfirmed." This is the best summary I've found so far, and links to lots of videos and images. He also clarifies something I've been wondering about: 'This is almost certainly unrelated to the asteroid 2012 DA14 that will pass on Friday.'"

Comments

Almost?

[willcutaflip]

Could that have just been a smaller chunk that broke off of the DA14? I mean that is tomorrow. Sounds possible to me.

Re:Almost?

[Megane]

Not likely. DA14 is a few hours away and moving very fast... which means that it's still very far away.

I think the most interesting part of this incident is that there are reports a missile was sent up to intercept it, and hit it. I'm still not convinced that it wasn't just the meteor breaking up like so many of them do, but it would be amusing if that somehow made the ground damage worse.

And in Soviet Russia, dashcam watch meteor hit YOU!

Re:Almost?

[hcs_$reboot]

According to some sources, the directions of the Russian meteor and DA14 are different, making the two events unlikely to be related.

Re:Almost?

[SerpentMage]

If a missile did try to intercept, that makes me a WHOLE BUNCH more confident. I mean if a missile system can't tell the difference between a meteor and an actual missile we are essentially SOL. Forget about itchy fingers, watch out on Mother Nature.

Re:Almost?

[Hardhead_7]

According to TFA , DA14 is approaching from Earth's South while the videos so far make it look like this one is coming from the East, so they're on completely different orbits.

Re:Almost?

[citizenr]

According to some sources, the directions of the Russian meteor and DA14 are different, making the two events unlikely to be related.

Maybe it changed its trajectory :)

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that we don't know about the huge Russian meteor ahead of the news report is scary.

Re:Almost?

[gl4ss]

The fact that we don't know about the huge Russian meteor ahead of the news report is scary.

well it wasn really _huge_ now though was it? the sonic boom did the damage to most people(shattering glasses etc).

Re:Almost?

[AchilleTalon]

Haven't you RTFA? It is pretty well explained why it is very unlikely to be related to DA14.

Re:Almost?

[Cali Thalen]

Too busy right now to research, but compared to the speed this meteor was supposedly moving (33K mph?), and what I remember as the speed of a typical intercept missile (up to 10K or so mph maybe?), doesn't it seem pretty unlikely that it could have actually have been a hit?

Going from very hazy pre-coffee memory here, so my numbers may be *just* a tad off...

Re:Almost?

[cffrost]

>TFA

link?

Yep, just click it.

Re:Almost?

[Big Hairy Ian]

Is it just me or does Siberia seem to attract large meteors? :)

Re:Almost?

[Big Hairy Ian]

Its ok its just the real Iranian monkey coming home :)

Re:Almost?

[Barsteward]

Nah, its God retribution for those gays and people enjoying sex outside marriage although its not precision bombing so there is a lot of collateral victims (as usual - maybe God should invest in laser sights)

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would, of course, depend on when it was detected, direction of travel, location at launch, lots of different things. Not impossible, off the top of my head.

Re:Almost?

[azalin]

Well how's a interceptor missile supposed to know the difference and why should it even care? A fast moving, unidentified object enters your airspace, why shouldn't you try to shoot it down, even automatically?
A large scale response needs to be done through humans and should require several safety features. But a single automated air defense missile? Does it move faster than an airplane? Has it been announced? Then shoot it down.

Re:Almost?

[Cerberus7]

Siberia is big. It has more gravity. *runs!*

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what would have happened if this meteor hit Israel from the east.

Re:Almost?

[Dunbal]

Not necessarily. Imagine a basketball in front of you. That is the Earth. Now draw an imaginary line from your nose to the left side of the basketball. Your line is going east to west. Now draw another line to the right of the basketball. Your line is now going west to east. Same point of origin. Same basic direction of movement. Different perceived trajectory for those living on the basketball.

Re:Almost?

[fatphil]

It sounds possible only because you were too lazy to read the BadAstronomer's write-up, the first link in the summary. It's millions of miles away from the asteroid, on a different orbit, and apparently coming from a different direction.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

An interceptor moving at 25 mph can hit a target moving at 250,000 mph.... IF the angle is right.

So, being in front of the target can make up for slower interceptor speed, and relative speed is not as important as early detection.

I could have intercepted this with a thrown rock... If I had known long enough in advance.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Russia is extremely homophobic, in-fact their trying to pass some pretty nasty anti-gay laws right now.

So you think God would go after some us heathens in the US that actually allow them to get married?

Or maybe God just really SUCKS at aiming?

Re:Almost?

[ByOhTek]

If it was going in roughly the opposite direction, it only needed to get in the meteor's path, depending on how far ahead, and path predictability... that could be done at a walking pace (if you are close enough to the projected impact point).

In fact, the patch of earth it hit, which is still in the reference frame you are talking about, intercepted it quite nicely.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

ho, don't run you actually have it right. it's a bigger area than most countries so it will have more strikes.

it's like us folks in british columbia wondering why there are so many lottery winners in the east but it's simply more people buying more tickets.

Re:Almost?

[DragonTHC]

I think the more important question is, did they know it came from space?

With the space program based less than 1000 miles due south, how could they not be tracking this from space?

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehm... not to ruin your joke, but Chelyabinsk and the Urals are *not* in Siberia (there is still some way to go to the east).

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, its God retribution for those gays and people enjoying sex outside marriage although its not precision bombing so there is a lot of collateral victims (as usual - maybe God should invest in laser sights)

Like the flood when He saved Noah and his family, or Sodom and Gomorrah when He argued with Abraham about how He would spare the cities if any righteous people were found?

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe I'm having to explain this, but "TFA" is "The Fucking Article." The link you're looking for is already in the summary.

Re:Almost?

[Joce640k]

Based on a sample size of two?

Re:Almost?

[kdogg73]

A quick analysis of the trajectory will verify that. Someone else's comment on the smaller piece outpacing the larger piece of DA14—still many hours off—is an indication that there is no relationship between the two.

What an exciting event!

Re:Almost?

[FatLittleMonkey]

Now draw a line from the ceiling. That's the trajectory of DA14. South-to-North.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares, most likely the kinetic weapon would do more damage at that speed.

Both have a similar effect, DAMAGE:

Re:Almost?

[Barsteward]

he has already, what do you think that last hurricane was all about????? :o)

Re:Almost?

[Barsteward]

Sparing a whole city if a few righteous people were found? just show that he does need laser targeting equipment, he's obviously not a good as he's (she?) cracked up to be

Re:Almost?

[dywolf]

nah. most missiles dont reach 10k. about the only ones that would are the ballistic missiles, and that's because they need to get to space (or nearly so). typical missles are mach 4-5. For ex, Patriot is mach 5, which is only around 3800 mph.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would, of course, depend on when it was detected, direction of travel, location at launch, lots of different things.

And on who is reporting it...

Re:Almost?

[LoverOfJoy]

The enemy's gate is down.

Re:Almost?

[ackthpt]

Most likely just one of those tiny little things, the ones which we can't detect until they are nearly upon us.

Space is better armed and far sneakier than we'll ever be.

Re:Almost?

[buchner.johannes]

Dmitri Rogosin said that neither US nor Russia have capabilities to shoot something like this down. Source He is proposing a global collaboration though for detection and defense, and also emphasized in his last interview that cold-war-like constellations must be avoided. Source

Re:Almost?

[LoRdTAW]

No air defense missile is that fast. 10,000 MPH is mach 13, faster than any aircraft not including spacecraft such as rockets and the space shuttle (they need escape velocities of over 25,000 MPH/40,000 kph). The fastest SAM's (Surface to Air Missiles) are the Russian S-300 with a speed of nearly mach 6 while the US built MIM-104 Patriot has a speed of around mach 5. They are plenty fast to shoot down most any aircraft made today.

Another thing to think about is this: The speed of the meteor was so fast that by the time any radar would have picked it up, it would have already hit the earth before a radar operator could even summon his commander to have a look. There is no way they could have scrambled SAM's for launch, the entry and impact happened in seconds.

Re:Almost?

[jadv]

Next time you get an early warning about an incoming meteorite, send Steve Ballmer down there with a chair in his hands. Problem solved!

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

How complex do you want the radar system? Let's not forget that radar (having a much longer wavelength than visible light) has generally poorer resolution (without some awful fancy tricks, hard to do in the few seconds the system has to make a decision). Inasmuch as that's the case, from the point of view of the radar, the object has only a rough location, and a speed (change in location per unit time). With multiple radars linked with a computer, it might be able to add size, and get a better fix on location, as well as a much better idea of trajectory. But again, in a very short period of time, it could be hard to get much better information than that an object big enough to be a missile or an aircraft or a balloon or a chunk of something from space is at a given location, and moving in such and such direction, at a given speed.

When the object is hauling ass, it rules out balloon, and probably most aircraft too. When the object is detected as coming from space, hurtling downward, from a location where there was NO aircraft or missile being tracked, it pretty much should be enough to nail down that it was probably space trash. If it was seen going UP FROM THE EARTH first, then yeah, ICBM. But let's not forget that the object was probably fairly irregularly (and while burning up - inconsistently) shaped object with an unpredictable composition, which may or may not reflect radar like a smooth, largely cylindrical object.

It's not quite as simple and clear cut as in the movies, I'm afraid. Resolution is low, the object could intermittently absorb or refract the radar energy... as the object burns up it could be surrounded by a cloud that could play all kinds of hell with a radar signal even if it were an object that normally reflects radar neatly. There are just too damned many factors for a missile system to be able to identify something like this, 100% of the time.

As long as the missile system is good at identifying and tracking missiles, I think it's probably adequate, or at least I won't lose sleep over it. OTOH... maybe the thing to do is to make missiles look like meters! Stealth missiles! No!!!!

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just unlikely, but impossible. NASA says that it was on a completely different trajectory.

Re:Almost?

[jitterman]

Agree here. Also, from watching the video, it looks like it got hot rapidly, but not instantaneously - more in keeping with a friction-based action than an explosive one. Granted, when it's at its brightest it's not east to see what could be going on there, and I'm no missile expert, but I didn't see anything that gave me the impression that a second object was involved.

Re:Almost?

[AlecC]

The Shuttle, or anything else headed for Low Earth Orbit, does not need 25,000 mph. That is the velocity required to escape completely from the Earth's gravity well, for example to go to Mars. Low Earth Orbit, which is all the Shuttle could reach, is energetically less than half way to free space.

One problem with wanting to shoot this thing down is that it would be coming from a completely different direction from that which you would be watching for attacking aircraft or missiles. Effectively, you would need a complete second set of radars to cover this unexpected direction.

Re:Almost?

[M. Baranczak]

God can aim at the homos just fine, it's His boyfriend that I'm worried about.

Re:Almost?

[amck]

Well how's a interceptor missile supposed to know the difference and why should it even care?

because its economically trivial to hide the real missiles amongst decoys.
If you can't identify real missiles from those deliberately pretending to be missiles (never mind
missile-like stuff) , then you've already lost.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand "earth's south", but I am struggling with "earth's east"

Re:Almost?

[goodmanj]

Well how's a interceptor missile supposed to know the difference?

Velocity. An ICBM arrives at about 5-7 km/s. An asteroid arrives at a *minimum* of 11 km/s.

why should it even care?

Lots of reasons. Among them: asteroids as big as an ICBM enter Earth's atmosphere several times a year. If you tried to shoot them all down, you'd run out of missiles and money pretty quick. Also, if there's a miscommunication between someone's space program and someone's missile defense program, you end up killing a lot of astronauts.

In practice, any radar that can detect an incoming ICBM comes with enough computer power to instantaneously compute an orbital trajectory for it, and see immediately whether it's an asteroid, a spacecraft, or a suborbital missile.

Re:Almost?

[bobjr94]

I don't see where these reports get started. Most missile launches Ive seen have left smoke trails of their own, there is no trail leading from the ground to the sky. And the several dash cam videos show a light coming down from the sky slowly getting brighter, peaking then fading out, no quick bright explosion. Missile defense systems are made to detect launches to give maximum warning time, we probably had a few seconds notice before this entered the atmosphere since it wasn't really that large of an object.

Re:Almost?

[asylumx]

The link you're looking for is already in the summary.

[Citation Needed]

Re:Almost?

[mapkinase]

The submission has 6 links none of them have any reference to TFA.

Re:Almost?

[Immerman]

And how exactly are you supposed to identify what exactly that high-speed ballistic object is when it's hidden behind a EM-blocking screen of plasma (aka "the fireball")? Maybe it's a rock, maybe it's an orbital-launched nuke, do you really want to wait until it hits the ground to know for sure?

If there's a lot of incoming missiles then yes, you need to have a way to identify and eliminate the highest threats, and that's hardly an easy task - I imagine the best that can be done is analyzing the flight profiles to determine the likely destination and chassis type of each, the latter of which will hopefully give you a clue as to the "high value" targets. With just one high-energy bogey though, why risk letting it hit?

Heck, for that matter can you think of a better ongoing test of your missile defense system than intentionally having it shoot down meteors when not at high alert?

Re:Almost?

[mapkinase]

There are six links in the summary, Anonymous Moron

Re:Almost?

[cffrost]

The submission has 6 links none of them have any reference to TFA.

The first fucking link, buddy: The Fucking Article

I even looked at 'em all and made sure that that one talked about what you seem to wanna read about. Will you let go of my hand now, FFS?

Re:Almost?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Is the Iranian space program so noob they have to do their nuke testing at the same time?

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Enhance your calm, cffrost, maybe mapkinase just doesn't know that TFA means "the full article" :)

Re:Almost?

[Farmer Tim]

Russia: so bad even the universe throws rocks at it.

Re:Almost?

[GameboyRMH]

"Meh it hit the planet, close enough for deity work."

Re:Almost?

[History's Coming To]

The problem is that anti-missile-missiles are designed to stop the missile's payload from detonating - there's still going to be a rain of hot metal shrapnel, but it's no longer going to have a functioning warhead, so shooting a missile down helps. A meteor on the other hand doesn't have a warhead, all of its destructive energy is in the form of kinetic energy, and there's virtually nothing you can do about this unless you hit it with something very big/fast like a large hypersonic object, then you simply have a bigger bang (most of the damage in this case was simply acoustic energy) and more debris raining down over a larger area.

Re:Almost?

[Quila]

The Sprint missile designed in the early 70s could hit mach 10 in 5 seconds, maximum intercept time to 30 km was 15 seconds.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just hope it isn't' Vegeta.

Re:Almost?

[History's Coming To]

Didn't stop CNN asking if this was related to climate change. I can understand people getting confused by the common root in meteorite and meteorology, but they really shouldn't be allowed to present TV news shows.

Re:Almost?

[greenfruitsalad]

Christians would sue for copyright infringement.

Re:Almost?

[Type44Q]

Tell you what: walk out onto the highway at, let's say, 3 miles per hour and tell me how much difficulty you have hitting a vehicle that's travelling ~65mph... :p

Re:Almost?

[cffrost]

Enhance your calm, cffrost, maybe mapkinase just doesn't know that TFA means "the full article" :)

I'm calm; else I wouldn't have gone to the trouble... However, mapkinase has been registered for 5+ years, and IIRC, an AC defined TFA for him in another post under this article.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, get back to your koolaid!

Clearly you've had enough for all of us.

Meteorites regularly blow up in the atmosphere due to extreme heat and pressure.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

If only I had mod points!

Re: Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I'm on the wierd part of youtube again? I thought i was on slashdot?

Re:Almost?

[amicusNYCL]

So you think God would go after some us heathens in the US that actually allow them to get married?

Or maybe God just really SUCKS at aiming?

If God had a message where he wanted to tell us that we're doing something wrong, what it is that we're doing wrong, why it's wrong, and what the right way is, maybe he would choose a better medium for his message than sending a random meteor to cause a sonic boom that breaks windows and injures a thousand people. Like, for example, appearing and actually speaking the message, so that there is no room for miscommunication.

This God fellow sounds a lot like me in middle school. "I like that girl. I'm going to shoot a spitball at her. I'm sure she'll get the idea."

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a small world, indeed.

Re:Almost?

[Kelbear]

Why do asteroids have a minimum velocity of 11km/s?

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not likely. DA14 is a few hours away and moving very fast... which means that it's still very far away.

That's pretty damn close when we're talking about astronomical scales of distance. Unless there's some kind of information which indicates this had a different trajectory and/or composition, the odds of these two bodies being completely unrelated are absurdly small.

I think the most interesting part of this incident is that there are reports a missile was sent up to intercept it, and hit it

There are also reports that it's the End of the World, and also that it's a new weapon the US is testing out, and that it's the Mayan Doomsday asteroid delivered by the Russian Post Office with its usual punctuality issues.
But if you ignore the batshit crazy people, comedians, and con artists.... and listen to people who actually are in a position of knowledge and power, no they didn't send any missiles up and in fact admit that they don't even have tech capable of doing so.... and neither does the US.

Re:Almost?

[goodmanj]

That's Earth's escape velocity. If you fall into Earth's gravity well from outside, you'll be going at least that fast when you hit the Earth.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most air defense warheads are quite small...quite unlikely to do much to a chunk of rock.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the newer RIM-161 variants (SM3 block 2A) are faster than the S-300, but what can you believe from open sources?

Anyway, the interceptor obviously doesn't have to be faster than the target assuming it has good geometry to make the intercept. To grossly simplify there are two basic navigation modes a missile can use, pure pursuit, and lead pursuit. Pure pursuit is the simplest, the missile just points directly at the target the whole time. Missile guidance graduated past that decades ago. Virtually all modern air-air missiles use some sort of lead pursuit and fly to where they need to be to optimize end-game seeker acquisition and kinematics. Assuming you have geometry to pull adequate lead, you can intercept with a slower missile than target. Since ABM defense typically means the target is coming toward you, that is a pretty normal intercept.

That being said, I agree that it is unlikely that they had an S-300 battery in full blown ROBO-kill mode and didn't at least have some sort of manual release consent, and it is unlikely that they would get manual release-consent in time to make an intercept unless they had been tracking the thing coming for a while.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's another North Korean nuclear test. Good thing the detonator failed.

Re:Almost?

[Quiet_Desperation]

(Simply steps in path of car)

Ha! I guess I showed yo-

Re:Almost?

[isorox]

If God had a message where he wanted to tell us that we're doing something wrong, what it is that we're doing wrong, why it's wrong, and what the right way is, maybe he would choose a better medium for his message than sending a random meteor to cause a sonic boom that breaks windows and injures a thousand people. Like, for example, appearing and actually speaking the message, so that there is no room for miscommunication.

Organised religion has too much to lose, and will spin any message that god gave out. Omniscience and Omnipotence have no chance against PR companies.

Re: Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what he said..

Re:Almost?

[isorox]

Most likely just one of those tiny little things, the ones which we can't detect until they are nearly upon us.

Space is better armed and far sneakier than we'll ever be.

Surely this is a perfect example of why I need to keep a few assault rifles and an RPG at home.

Re:Almost?

[Hognoxious]

If a huge thing like the Sun can switch from East to West in 12 hours this pebble will run rings round us.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you get Mach 13? That is impossibly slow for a meteor. Meteor speeds range from 11 km/s to 72 km/s (retrograde impacts). That is Mach 32 to Mach 211. Not even a railgun could touch a meteor.

Re:Almost?

[gl4ss]

Ehm... not to ruin your joke, but Chelyabinsk and the Urals are *not* in Siberia (there is still some way to go to the east).

Sorry, but east of Ural is in Siberia, unless you go by some modern technical state governing lines... which nobody outside of the region would do really.

Re:Almost?

[tbird81]

I can understand "earth's south", but I am struggling with "earth's east"

It's where the sun rises from.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're apparently too fucking stupid to work out which one of those is the actual article, and which are just extra info related to the story.

Re:Almost?

[DarwinSurvivor]

I'm not sure if that's a joke or you missed Galileo's memo.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Siberia, you don't run as fast!

Re:Almost?

[riverat1]

As fast as that thing was moving I don't think you'd have a chance of hitting it with a missile. I mean the whole video was only 49 seconds long. Even with the part of the meteor's path that wasn't in the video it undoubtedly lasted less than a minute. Checking Space.com it says the meteor entered the atmosphere as a speed of about 64,800 kph (40, 260 mph) and exploded over Chelyabinsk at an altitude of 15-20 km (50,000-65,000 feet). Pretty tough for a missile to catch I'd say.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this thing would have hit Israel, The Holy Land, the Land of GODs Chosen People, the US would declare War On Space!!!!

On their boats, and on their planes, they coming to America!
They coming to America.
Today!
My country 'this of theee
Today!
Sweet land of liberty
Today!
Of thee I sing
Today!
of thee I sing
Todaaaaaaaay!!!

Re:Almost?

[fractoid]

Define "missile"? Most homing missiles (still, afaik) aim at heat signatures. Sent by humans or not, meteors that land on human habitations are missiles. (Missile: n. An object that is forcibly propelled at a target, by hand or mechanically.) I think "by physics" counts as "forcibly propelled".

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-ballistic missile missiles are kinematic hit-to-kill. Where they target for final impact is optimized to take out the warhead, but that's not the real problem. They just don't have the mass or velocity to do much about a multi-ton asteroid. The kinetic warheads are pretty small, kinda like throwing a golf ball at a speeding truck.

There is no doubt that braking up one big object into a bunch of smaller objects would be desirable. After all, tons of meteors fall on the earth every year a little at a time and do little-no damage. If we saved them all up, rolled them in a ball and dropped them at once it would do a lot of damage.

The comparison between being shot with a rifle or a shotgun is actually somewhat appropriate with a little modification. In this case I think the analogy would be between being shot with birdshot or being shot with a rifle from 50m while wearing a heavy leather jacket. At 50M it is likely that the birdshot will have spread out to a degree that it will not even punch through the jacket. If it does, only a few pellets will make it through and are unlikely to penetrate very deep.

Conversely, the rifle bullet will go right through the jacket and your body.

Re:Almost?

[vandamme]

The most interesting to me was the Russian politician who insisted that it was an attack by an American weapon-ray-something. HAARP, probably.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to use rocketry, you could use lasers to break them into smaller pieces to give more air resistance to burn up easier in the atmosphere.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not powerful lasers to split them up and let the air resistance do the rest?

Re:Almost?

[gmyuriy]

a missile intercepting a 10 ton object moving at 40kms ??? sorry bud that is not possible

Re:Almost?

[goodmanj]

You've been playing too many video games. Learn some physics.

Re:Almost?

[Anonymous Coward]

No air defense missile is that fast.

Yes there is. America had a close in missile defense system almost 40 years ago with interceptor speeds over Mach 10.

Re:Almost?

[bingoUV]

That is only if there is no force decelerating the object. Atmosphere is an enormous force against fast moving objects, so that assumption of no decelerating force doesn't apply for asteroids.

Re:Almost?

[Megane]

For what it's worth, apparently they couldn't have sent a missle to intercept it because they never saw it in the first place. The early warning systems are designed to see things coming in on a ballistic trajectory, not things coming in from outer space.

Wow

[GregC63]

Awesome video, a lot of freaked out people over there! The flash of light and the shock wave had a bunch of folks crapping their pants. Also reports of about 500 being injured.

Re:Wow

[LucidBeast]

I've always wondered outloud why all Russians have dashcams. Now I look like a fool.

Re:Wow

[azalin]

So in case it would have been bigger and we noticed it let's say a few weeks/a month/a year ahead of impact. Could we have done anything? Do we have any plans for such events?

Re:Wow

[Megane]

Dashcams are apparently because their courts are such that they need that kind of evidence if someone hits them.

The fact that they occasionally catch cool videos of other things going on is a bonus. For instance, the crew-only Aeroflot flight back in December that overshot the runway and ran over the fence into a highway. The guy with the camera had to swerve to dodge a passenger seat that bounced in front of him.

Re:Wow

[dovf]

I've always wondered outloud why all Russians have dashcams. Now I look like a fool.

There was a great piece on this at Krulwich Wonders a couple of months back...

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome video, a lot of freaked out people over there! The flash of light and the shock wave had a bunch of folks crapping their pants. Also reports of about 500 being injured.

With all the hype of DA14 in the news can you blame them for being freaked out? I'm sure many of them thought that the scientists were wrong about DA14 and that they were being hit by (some of) it.

Re:Wow

[ACS Solver]

Or military jets using a highway as a runway.

Re:Wow

[Razgorov Prikazka]

>> The flash of light and the shock wave had a bunch of folks crapping their pants

Pfff... the flash and shock wave is the least of their concerns...

Check out the CHEMTRAIL that mofo leaves behind!!!!

This MUST be the work of a 'three-letter-agency', no other explanation will explain that kind of chemtrail. It is even bigger that the ones made by regular flying objects. I would love to elaborate on that, but I have to answer the door... ...that's peculiar... two men in black suits ringing at my door...

Re:Wow

[SternisheFan]

So in case it would have been bigger and we noticed it let's say a few weeks/a month/a year ahead of impact. Could we have done anything? Do we have any plans for such events?

On WCBS-TV NY early news this morning they played a telephone interview with a scientist (his name I don't know), who said it was to small to be noticed or tracked, and that it was probably about the size of a loaf of bread.

Re:Wow

[drankr]

Reminded me of videos of the Twin Towers falling. All that dust and scared people. Awesome indeed.

Re:Wow

[Luckyo]

Actually dashcams are a requirement of insurance companies to insure a car.

Re:Wow

[Sockatume]

Nope. That's a burning natural gas deposit in Turkmenistan.

Re:Wow

[L4t3r4lu5]

There is apparently a big problem with illegal immigrants waiting at the side of the road and running into traffic in order to make big insurance claims. I've only seen one video on YouTube of it happening, but it was enough for me to look up the price of one of those dashcams on Amazon, and I don't even live in Russia. Fucking horrifying.

Re:Wow

[FatLittleMonkey]

Linky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derweze

Re: Wow

[red_dragon]

Another explanation that I've heard is that insurance fraud is rampant over there, so people have taken to the dashcams in order to protect themselves.

Re:Wow

[Dave Whiteside]

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-russian-drivers-have-dash-cams-2012-12
has some useful in on dashcams

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

The flash of light and the shock wave had a bunch of folks crapping their pants. Also reports of about 500 being injured.

Must have been some powerful pants crapping. I can't say I've ever crapped my pants hard enough to be injured.

Re:Wow

[goodmanj]

Definitely too small to be noticed or tracked, but it was bigger than a loaf of bread. The 2003 Chicago meteorite was about that size, and while it lit up the night sky like nobody's business, there was no significant shock wave. I'm going to guess this one was about 1-10 meters across based on its effects.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?sea=Park+Forest&sfor=names&ants=&falls=&stype=contains&lrec=50&map=ge&browse=&country=All&srt=name&categ=All&mblist=All&phot=&snew=0&pnt=no&code=18106

http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/

Re:Wow

[PhxBlue]

For instance, the crew-only Aeroflot flight back in December that overshot the runway and ran over the fence into a highway. The guy with the camera had to swerve to dodge a passenger seat that bounced in front of him.

See, that's the sort of shit that just doesn't happen in the United States. And that's why I think Russia is cool (and live in the United States).

Re:Wow

[Daetrin]

Once again, a giant meteorite has exploded over Russia - the only country giant meteorites ever seem to explode over!

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, that's right

Re:Wow

[arkamax]

In Russia? No, they are not. But they are helpful if someone tries to frame you for an accident, and that happens sometimes, especially if that they drive a Cayenne and are kids of some kind of high official.

Re:Wow

[arkamax]

Not Aeroflot - Red Wings. The prior is the biggest airline in Russia (their operations are relatively safe), the latter actually seized operations while settling the dust around said incident.

Re:Wow

[arkamax]

*ceased. Sorry.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Could we have done anything?

Yes! To start with only the most obvious cost-free suggestion: Have everybody stand away from their fucking windows during impact! Basic duck and cover.

Re:Wow

[Luckyo]

In Russia, insurance company will pay nothing if you claim someone hit you, but he runs and police doesn't catch him due to lack of evidence. Sure, you can get insurance without dashcam, but if you want to actually get paid by your insurance company when something happens, you either have dashcam or a very airtight case. Else you're SOL.

This is very different from EU, where in most countries insurance will pay for your losses if something like this happens even without police finding the perpetrator.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just not true.

Re:Wow

[Luckyo]

Corrected for more accuracy in the follow up. The meaning is that it de facto correct, even if not de jure. If you want to get money out of insurance company in Russia, you have to have perpetrator who hit you caught. That will rarely happen on your witness statement alone and police are generally unwilling and uncaring to start questioning others.

So you instead present them with dashcam video of perpetrator closing the loopholes and essentially forcing the insurance company to pay.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

They have come. To give you the enema of God.

On injuries and damage

[ACS Solver]

As of right now, English-language sources seem to be a bit behind on the injury/damage reports.

The current reports from the city government say that 725 people have received medical attention, with 31 being hospitalized. Infrastructural damage amounts to problems in the centralized building heating system, and blown out windows in about 3000 apartment buildings, 34 hospitals and clinics, and 361 schools/daycares. I should note that, this being Russia, blown out windows are a serious matter because they render the buildings cold, especially coupled with heating system problems. Gas supply has been turned off in parts of the city as a precaution.

Overall, though, there appears to be no serious damage - though emergency repairs and lots of new windows are needed.

Re:On injuries and damage

[BlackPignouf]

Overall, though, there appears to be no serious damage - though emergency repairs and lots of new windows are needed.

No serious damage? Yeah, what could possibly go wrong in a city with 1M people, that has no gas supply and frozen hospitals?
Minimum temperatures are -4F/-20C at night right now, and maximum aren't much higher.

Re:On injuries and damage

[hoboroadie]

I've got RT on right now, that's why I checked/. to see what others were thinking. (everyone else sleeps 'til dawn around here.)
Full coverage.

Re:On injuries and damage

[ACS Solver]

For all the problems of the Russian government, the emergency services are well-prepared, given the not uncommon occurence of various emergencies. The city has its own glass factory even, and they'd be able to replace most of the windows within a couple of days. Emergency repairs should restore much of the heating quickly, and very importantly, the hospitals are not being overwhelmed - the amount of people who need hospitalization is fairly low. The authorities apparently intend to fix windows today where it's most critical.

Just to be clear, it is of course a serious situation, but by no serious damage I mean there is nothing like a need to evacuate hundreds of people to other cities for medical treatment, there are no deaths fortunately, and there are no buildings that have fully collapsed.

Re:On injuries and damage

[gl4ss]

Overall, though, there appears to be no serious damage - though emergency repairs and lots of new windows are needed.

No serious damage? Yeah, what could possibly go wrong in a city with 1M people, that has no gas supply and frozen hospitals?
Minimum temperatures are -4F/-20C at night right now, and maximum aren't much higher.

hate to be a dick about this, but they're russians, so they can handle the state failing for couple of days.

Re:On injuries and damage

[SMoynihan]

I'd guess that most of the direct injuries happened when people ran to their windows to watch the flare and contrail. Looking at the videos, the sonic boom happened at least 27 seconds later: right when people would be clustered in front of the glass.

It is similar to Tsunamis, where a lot of the fatalities happen to people who chase the receding sea...

Re:On injuries and damage

[azalin]

Until a few of years ago the collapse of central heating in winter was rather commonplace. All the broken windows are a new feature, but I'd say Russians are very good at improvising and will cope with the situation.

Re:On injuries and damage

[Luckyo]

Update on lenta.ru 30 minutes ago:
http://lenta.ru/news/2013/02/15/muchmore/

According to RIA novosti news agency:
950 people wounded to some degree. Of these:
524 needed medical assistance
34 adults and 12 children hospitalized
2 people had to be put in intensive care

Most damage apparently came from shards of shattered glass wounding people.

Other set of figures is from federal government and that one specifies:
571 wounded to some degree
758 asked for medical assistance

It's also stated that they already found remains of one of the pieces in a local lake where meteorite punched through the ice and left shards on the site.

Re:On injuries and damage

[rossdee]

"Minimum temperatures are -4F/-20C at night right now, and maximum aren't much higher."

Sounds like the weather around here, The current temperature is -4F (at 8:13 in the morning)

Re:On injuries and damage

[Endlisnis]

3000 apartment buildings need new windows, and you think they can be replaced in "a couple of days"? If each building has 100 windows, then it's 300,000 windows to replace. I don't know how you think windows get replaced, or manufactured, but it takes about 1 man-hour to replace a small window (maybe 20 minutes if you don't care about damaging the walls or cleaning up the old window). 300,000 windows = 300,000 man-hours of work. To accomplish that in 2 days would require over 6,000 people to be working on it for 48 continuous hours. And that's not even taking the manufacturing of the windows into account. This will take months to completely replace the windows.

Re:On injuries and damage

[Vicarius]

All the broken windows are a new feature, but I'd say Russians are very good at improvising and will cope with the situation.

I just read from a Russian news source that some people are also trying to benefit from the situation by breaking their own windows in hope that government will give them some kind of compensation.

Re:On injuries and damage

[Anonymous Coward]

Now open all the windows and turn off the heating and see how you like it. Pretty nippy, eh? Must be really invigorating!

Re:On injuries and damage

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly sure Russians have their duct tape and plastic which will make-do until they can get window glass replaced. It'll suck, but it's not like anyone with any sense would leave their buildings open to the elements for long in that kind of freezing cold weather.

Re:On injuries and damage

[gl4ss]

6,000 people to be working on it for 48 continuous hours.

yeah.. and there's a million people in the area? they'll fix 'em to hold air quick enough since it's winter.. and with glass once they get around to it.

Re:On injuries and damage

[shutdown -p now]

Trust me, they aren't going to sit there with broken windows until someone makes new glass for them. They'll just plaster the holes with whatever is at hand, like old clothes and/or newspapers.

Re:On injuries and damage

[azalin]

Why doesn't this surprise me one bit...

The real reason for the trails

[Anonymous Coward]

http://cs6081.userapi.com/v6081385/508f/hhp8_8Hlg7g.jpg

Putin FTW

Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[azalin]

... hows your space program going.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[Twinbee]

...and my big brother's coming soon.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[DerekLyons]

And even if we multiplied out current space program's budget by ten times... it still wouldn't be enough. A thousand times? That might be enough for a half ass program with a slim-to-none chance of survival.

We could roll twenty Falcon 9's and fifteen Dragon's off the assembly lines and launch them every hour if we really wanted to. It's just a matter of writing a big enough check - but it wouldn't be enough. The space program isn't the problem. The problem is that building an off-Earth colony that can survive the loss of the Earth indefinitely is a Very Very Hard Problem - a problem whose shape and scope we have only the faintest ideas of the outline of and filled with known unknowns and even more unknown unknowns. And pretty much none of those are in any way related to the current space program.

Grow up and stop using cosmic impacts to fuel your fanboi masturbatory fantasies.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

1 US GDP should cover the research, engineering and contruction for an acceptable Project Orion type generation ship, equipped with enough relatively self-sustaining technology to give a non-trivial chance of off world, non-sol system, non-class m planet colony.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[Grave]

Uh.. what?

Sure it's a difficult problem, but we need to work on it. We're still taking baby steps, but humanity does need to wake the fuck up and start getting serious about colonizing other planets. If the universe's plethora of flying debris doesn't wipe us out, and if we manage to not kill each other off in a horrible war, and we prevent global climate change from rendering the planet unlivable, we're still faced with an eventual exhaustion of resources at our current rate of growth.

Just because something is hard and complex does not mean we shouldn't be working towards solving it.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

We wouldn't need to plan for Earth being completely wiped out.
The chances of that happening are seriously slim. It'd need to be a planetary body object that would hit to do that serious kind of damage.

Earth would survive all the other hits, however.
With enough supplies to survive "life-wiping" catastrophes, we could begin again on whatever remains after the dust settles.
The majority of these supplies could be in pure mineral content that would be used to grow and construct.
Most of that could come from space itself, in fact, with the mining operations.
And by using some bacteria to break down elements in to biologically useful molecules, it would speed that up considerably.

All we need to do just now (as far as we know) is get out in to space, get mining kickstarted, get some smelting operations going on up there (a few people on here are actually working on such devices right now), get some things constructed, use bulk rocky material as an outer coating to capture as much of the radiation and minor rocks as possible, advanced coatings under that to attempt to stop the larger and faster ones, there is the beginnings of an actual space age.
We are already on our way to do that right now, we just need to wait.

Admittedly this thing came straight the hell out of nowhere, but it was tiny and only done some minor damage.
Larger rocks are far far easier detected than this little thing was.
The next large thing we know of is Apophis, which is almost certainly going to miss us unless something breaks off any time between then and now.
We have plenty of time between then and now. And we are actively watching that anyway, so if it does crack, we'll be on it in a heartbeat.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[dywolf]

the insult was absolutely un called for.

and if something was coming for us, no one would a little thing like money get in the way of projects aimed at survival.
that's one of those situations where you say "F the cost, we'll pay it later, lets worry about surviving first!"

and in actuallity, we have the tech right now to build a colony or exploration ship, to get it started. its an engineering problem, and its largely solved.
it wouldnt be very efficient.
it would use a TON of resources, including time.
it would be HUGE.
it would cost a butt ton.
it would be dangerous.

But it is possible. So really the only thing lacking the will. Afterall, the pyramids weren't built in a day, even if our modern society pretty much lacks the vision to do or look forward to anything further away than the next weekend.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[Sockatume]

You think that the human race's only option for of survival is an off-world colony, and you think the other guy's the fantasist?

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[the gnat]

Afterall, the pyramids weren't built in a day, even if our modern society pretty much lacks the vision to do or look forward to anything further away than the next weekend.

The pyramids were built using slave labor on the orders of an unelected absolute monarch. I hope you're not suggesting this is an example we can learn from.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[DerekLyons]

I'm not surprised your reply starts with "Uh.. what?" - because that sound you just heard was my point whooshing over your head.
 
I didn't say we shouldn't get started, I said the answers don't lie in an ever improved space "program". Access to space is the least important and most trivial part of the problem of building a colony that can survive the loss of the Earth.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[DerekLyons]

Did I say that an off world colony was the only solution? No, I did not - learn to read and comprehend.

What I said was a space program was a trivial precursor to the OP's idea that we need to get off this rock.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[DerekLyons]

the insult was absolutely un called for.

Truth is not an insult.
 

and in actuallity, we have the tech right now to build a colony or exploration ship, to get it started. its an engineering problem, and its largely solved

Your idea of the current state of scientific and engineering development is... ludicrously disconnected from reality. The engineering problems aren't "largely solved", not by a long shot. Hell, we have problems keeping the life support system on the ISS functioning at 100% over the long term - and that system is a LEGO model compared with what would be required for a colony or generation ship. We don't even have a tested design for a Mars ship's ECS... let alone one many times more complex and that must operate over a vastly longer time span.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[RabidReindeer]

Afterall, the pyramids weren't built in a day, even if our modern society pretty much lacks the vision to do or look forward to anything further away than the next weekend.

The pyramids were built using slave labor on the orders of an unelected absolute monarch. I hope you're not suggesting this is an example we can learn from.

Actually, there is considerable doubt these days that the Egyptian pyramids were built by slaves. Based on nearby burials, it has been suggested, in fact, that the workers were construction professionals and may have been supplied with beer. Rather like their modern-day counterparts.

Though these days we've replaced the divine absolute monarch with CEOs.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[Dinghy]

humanity does need to wake the fuck up and start getting serious about colonizing other planets.

Irony: the next planet we end up colonizing ends up getting hit by a meteor and is destroyed.

Re:Meteors are the universes way to ask...

[david_thornley]

Personally, I think we should take baby steps here. Let's build a self-sustaining colony in Antarctica, one of the garden spots in the Solar System. Heck, it's got frickin' OXYGEN in the air in usable quantities, and there's actual water right there for the melting. After that, we'll have a much better idea of what we have to do to colonize elsewhere.

It begins, the horrible Asteroid B-movie.

[Anonymous Coward]

And another one will smash in to another country somewhere, and another, and another, then Paris gets wiped off the face of the Earth.

Damn you Hollywoooooood!

Re:It begins, the horrible Asteroid B-movie.

[Terrasque]

It starts, with a killer asteroid hurling towards the earth.

Our hero is summoned, and immediately springs into action.

He sets out with his trusty weapon to save the world from the danger of the week.

After a long and awesome journey, he finally reach his destination.

Finally there, he slowly takes aim, breathes, and fire at The Killer Meteor. The meteor, alerted to his presence, fights back. What follows is a long action sequence only slowing down now and then so our hero can do manly poses.

After a long battle, and lots of shooting and fishing was done, there was only a small fragment left, just enough to spend the CGI budget, and show everyone how dangerous The Killer Meteor could have been.

No one was killed, and the world was again saved thanks to our hero.

The End.

Re:It begins, the horrible Asteroid B-movie.

[FatLittleMonkey]

Whereas the Hollywood version has miles of traffic coming to a stop, and people getting out of their cars to gawp at the fireball and trail, I did chuckle that in the Russian reality they don't even turn the radio down. Untz untz untz [booom] untz untz untz.

Re:It begins, the horrible Asteroid B-movie.

[Roachie]

No, no, no, not Paris, in general. Only the destruction of the Eiffel Tower is required for an Epic.

Armageddon

[Anonymous Coward]

What a coincidence that Bruce Willis is in Russia fighting the terrorists and their nuclear weapons. I love it when a plan comes together!

Intercepted by Russian air defence forces?

[ark1]

Some not so credible newspapers report unconfirmed military sources stating that Russian air defence shot down this bad boy.

Re:Intercepted by Russian air defence forces?

[Sockatume]

I think you'd have a better chance of trying to swat down a fighter plane with a magazine.

Re:Intercepted by Russian air defence forces?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's doubtful, best russian interceptor rockets fly with speeds up to 5Km/s, said meteor was entering atmosphere approx 40km/s

Re:Intercepted by Russian air defence forces?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Some not so credible newspapers report unconfirmed military sources stating that Russian air defence shot down this bad boy.

No, it was Putin who busted it into smithereens with one blow from his mighty fist.

Re:Intercepted by Russian air defence forces?

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN?

Re:Intercepted by Russian air defence forces?

[i kan reed]

"Shot down" implies that it wasn't headed for the ground already. Delivered an accurate STA countermeasure might be more correct?

Re:Intercepted by Russian air defence forces?

[Anonymous Coward]

so by that reasoning it shouldn't be possible for say a pedstrian walking 5 mph to step in front of a car going 40mph

Re:Intercepted by Russian air defence forces?

[steelfood]

Hear that? That's Chuck Norris coming for you for your blasphemy. Because as we all know, Chuck Norris and only Chuck Norris is capable of taking on meteroids with his fists.

Paging Hale and Capelli

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hope there wasn't a mutagenic alien virus riding on that meteor...

Space Jump

[Jedi Holocron]

Pfffft.

That was Putin skydiving from space.

Shirtless, because he's Putin.

Re:Space Jump

[Anonymous Coward]

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BDIeHeECEAELbIy.jpg

Re:Space Jump

[jgtg32a]

http://cs6081.userapi.com/v6081385/508f/hhp8_8Hlg7g.jpg

Re:Space Jump

[Anonymous Coward]

Best comment on this whole incident I've seen all day.

Re:Space Jump

[L4t3r4lu5]

The explosion in the video was Putin discarding the ruined carcass of a Kodiak bear he was sky surfing on. Wrestled during the ascent, naturally.

Re:Space Jump

[jadv]

Baumgartner was a pussy! Real men do it the Putin way!

Alternative videos

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.standartnews.com/videos/watch/meteorit_padna_i_rani_desetki_v_rusiya-276.html
Here's a link with video from more places. (Best i've found so far)

Re:Alternative videos

[Maow]

http://www.standartnews.com/videos/watch/meteorit_padna_i_rani_desetki_v_rusiya-276.html
Here's a link with video from more places. (Best i've found so far)

Here's another good aggregation:

http://say26.com/meteorite-in-russia-all-videos-in-one-place.

I like the apparent "crater" in an ice covered lake. It's a hole punched through the ice. I'm hoping that someone will be able to recover a significant part or parts of the thing from the lake bottom eventually.

What about the crash site?

[danhaas]

Any pictures of the crash site? How far away was it from the city?

Re:What about the crash site?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lake.

Re:What about the crash site?

[Hardhead_7]

The point when it gets very bright is most likely when it broke up in the atmosphere, and all the smaller pieces burned up. There will most likely be debris found over the next few days, but there was no major impact site.

Re:What about the crash site?

[ACS Solver]

The apparent crash site (or maybe one of several, not clear if there were several sizeable fragments) is in a nearby lake, creating a 6 meter hole in ice. Picture at a news site. The site is under control of Russian authorities and a scientific group is due to arrive tomorrow to study the meteorite.

Re:What about the crash site?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course at the speed it was traveling it could have been the size of a pea and still made such a hole.

More seriously though, from the one dash video where you can see it streak through the sky it didn't seem to be going very fast. This is in contrast to what they say about a serious meteor strike that would go so fast that you couldn't even see it.

Re:What about the crash site?

[GameboyRMH]

The site is under control of Russian authorities and a scientific group is due to arrive tomorrow to study the meteorite.

And lemme guess, they want some freelance mercenaries to help protect the site that totally won't be overrun with mutant beasts? I'll get my auto-shotgun...

In other news

[zrbyte]

Zombies spotted in Chelyabinsk

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Not zombies, Chimera.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Chernogorsk*

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, they've updated the Chelyabinsk weather forecast.

Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[Zorpheus]

As I understood this asteroid came from a different direction than 2012 DA14, so that is why it is said that it is probably unrelated.
Still, I can't believe this. There is an asteroid passing very close to Earth, and on the same day we have this impact with hundreds of injuries. These are both very rare events, so it seems unlikely that they are unrelated. Maybe the orbits of both asteroids were linked somehow?

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[Threni]

> Maybe the orbits of both asteroids were linked somehow?

I imagine the sun was involved somewhere. Lousy hydrogen!

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[mapkinase]

>As I understood this asteroid came from a different direction than 2012 DA14

Any references?

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understood this asteroid came from a different direction than 2012 DA14, so that is why it is said that it is probably unrelated.

Still, I can't believe this. There is an asteroid passing very close to Earth, and on the same day we have this impact with hundreds of injuries. These are both very rare events, so it seems unlikely that they are unrelated. Maybe the orbits of both asteroids were linked somehow?

Maybe Ming the Emperor of the Universe is testing us poor earthlings.
If we see beyond the mere coincidence of these events then we're dooooooooooooomed.
Flaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaash ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh save us all.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[Eraesr]

Actually, meteors hitting the earth's atmosphere is a very common event. It happens almost every night. The only difference is that this time the meteor was large enough to be visible and have this result. The big 45m piece of asteroid passing by isn't that uncommon either, it's just passing by relatively close compared to other asteroids.
In short: we're not talking about two uncommon events (certainly not "very rare"). You're falling for the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy here.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[gmuslera]

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes

It was an attack that was supposed to strike at the hour of the other asteroid, so the government would be able to blame to it the event. Unfortunately, they used imperial time units instead of metric ones to coordinate the moment, and missed the right time by 16 hours.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[Zorpheus]

Not really, just comments somewhere else. 2012DA14 goes about from the south to the north, while this one came about from the east goign to the west, probably this was guessed from the videos.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[rwise2112]

>As I understood this asteroid came from a different direction than 2012 DA14

Any references?

Well, just TFA.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[hcs_$reboot]

Actually, meteors hitting the earth's atmosphere is a very common event. It happens almost every night. The only difference is that this time the meteor was large enough to be visible and have this result. The big 45m piece of asteroid passing by isn't that uncommon either, it's just passing by relatively close compared to other asteroids. In short: we're not talking about two uncommon events (certainly not "very rare"). You're falling for the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy here.

Where does the logic stand here?
Obviously,
- Big 45m asteroids wandering in the solar system: common event
- Meteors hitting the earth's atmosphere: common event
But
- 45m asteroid passing by, closer than the moon and even closer than the geostationary satellites: very uncommon
- A meteor falling on Earth big enough to make 500+ injuries: very uncommon
And... in the same day we have these two very uncommon events!
very uncommon x very uncommon = very very uncommon!

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[shock1970]

Actually, meteors hitting the earth's atmosphere is a very common event. It happens almost every night.

But meteors don't hit during the day... they're trying to be sneaky.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understood this asteroid came from a different direction than 2012 DA14, so that is why it is said that it is probably unrelated.

Still, I can't believe this. There is an asteroid passing very close to Earth, and on the same day we have this impact with hundreds of injuries. These are both very rare events, so it seems unlikely that they are unrelated. Maybe the orbits of both asteroids were linked somehow?

They very likely are not linked somehow. Coincidences happen all the time. It's only human that we try to relate things that aren't necessarily related. We always try to find patterns; it's our nature, which is why we tend to believe in things like karma and luck. Strive to understand and accept all circumstances of an event, and you'll never be led astray.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, cause a smaller object would not be pulled by earths gravity more to be a slightly different course. Assuming that both objects came from the same source.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[cyberchondriac]

Flash is too busy partying with Mark Wahlberg ..and Ted

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[mapkinase]

The submission has 6 links

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[Maow]

>As I understood this asteroid came from a different direction than 2012 DA14

Any references?

The Bad Astronomy blog deals with it. The author, Phil Plait, is not a "bad" astronomer, he worked on Hubble images for quite a while. The blog name is because he started it to counter "bad" astronomy.

[Update (Feb. 15, 15:45 UTC): The European weather satellite METEOSAT-9 caught images of the meteor trail blowing away due to winds high in the air. An animation was created from the images, displayed below. Note that the trail is oriented northeast to southwest, again very different than the orbit orientation of 2012 DA14 (south to north), indicating this is meteor is unrelated to the previously-known asteroid. Thanks to Timothy Patterson for the tip.]

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[Zorpheus]

I don't know about any meteor event before in the last thousand years where more than one person was injured. There was certainly no event with hundreds of injuries in that time.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[mapkinase]

Thank you for being polite, unlike the other guy.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[amicusNYCL]

They are probably rude because you keep asking which link to click on instead of just clicking on the links. There are only 6 of them, it's not like it's difficult to find information on this.

Re:Unrelated to 2012 DA14?

[goodmanj]

Actually there have been quite a few. The largest death reported death toll was "tens of thousands" in Shanxi, China, in 1490. There's a lot of doubt about the accuracy of that number, but it's pretty likely there were mass casualties. Plenty of other more recent cases where a big rock killed handfuls of people at a time.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1997JIMO...25..222G

The result of funding cuts for observatories

[tp1024]

The meteorite was several times larger than the last (and first ever) predicted impact in 2008.

It is trivially possible these days, to do several complete surveys of the sky each day and ensure that such asteroids are discovered several days ahead of time. Computers allow us do evaluate the data more or less in real time. The problem is: You need funding for the telescopes around the world and staff to run them.

While all the observatories would do, is to give warning to people in the area to stay indoors and away from windows - or leave the area alltogether if the rock is a bit larger - that's still better than "oups" and a couple videos from dashboard cameras. It would also provide a viable basis for sending up a rocket with a few tons of mass to break up an asteroid into harmless chunks. Possibly a combination of high and low density materials, like concrete and lead, to achieve a good distribution of the momentum through the whole asteroid.

I'm not kidding. A single ton mass in a head-on collision with 10-15km/s has as much kinetic energy as 15-30 tons of high explosives. Which should be enough to break up a 30m asteroid into very small chunks (this one in russia was probably around 10m), although some preparation is certainly in order.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason we need staff to run them is because each one is pretty much made to order. Make it an international program, with funding from a dozen countries to make thousands of them all over the world, and you won't need more than one person for each to maintain them, and a dozen individuals to collate the data.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Anonymous Coward]

What's more expensive? Staffing this warning system, or treating the injured? They'd be fixing the buildings either way.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Sockatume]

I'm not sure how it follows from discovering a solitary asteroid with a twenty hour lead time that we can "trivially" perform a sky sweep with enough comprehensiveness and detail to give a "several days" lead time. Yes, we could do it, but it's not at all obvious that it would be easy.

Turning a single impactor with a known trajectory into an unknown number of impactors of unknown size and unknown trajectory does not strike me as a great response to detecting such an object either.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[tom17]

The problem with this is that the world is so litigation happy right now, that when a meteorite 'slips through the net' and kills one person, the workers at the observatories might get sued into oblivion.

Likewise, if they call a city-wide evacuation and it plops into a nearby forest/lake instead, the businesses will be suing them for lost revenue.

These early warning systems (like the earthquake ones) can only be feasible if there is a litigation safety net over the institutions in question.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Hans Lehmann]

It would also provide a viable basis for sending up a rocket with a few tons of mass to break up an asteroid into.... That would like firing a gun into the sky, hoping to hit a bullet that was also fired into the sky moments before someone else a mile away, except much harder. At the distance at which you would need to intercept these projectiles they give off no heat, so you can't even use heat seeking space rockets (which don't exist anyway). Real life isn't a Bruce Willis movie.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[tp1024]

Real live has radar.

And real live Americans and Chinese have shot down satellites using ballistic missles - delta v about 8km/s, accuracy had to be at least ~1-2m.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Electricity Likes Me]

The problem with this is that the world is so litigation happy right now, that when a meteorite 'slips through the net' and kills one person, the workers at the observatories might get sued into oblivion.

Likewise, if they call a city-wide evacuation and it plops into a nearby forest/lake instead, the businesses will be suing them for lost revenue.

These early warning systems (like the earthquake ones) can only be feasible if there is a litigation safety net over the institutions in question.

This is why we'll end up buying the data from asteroid mining company's orbital survey telescopes. Some thing's capitalism solves ridiculously well (see also: black out military installations by just undercutting commercial mapping providers).

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[azalin]

A few years ago I would have said "only in America", but then Italy dragged geologists to court for not predicting an earthquake.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[VanessaE]

Sure it would be hard, but at least we're not talking about doing that while blindfolded and riding a horse.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be trivially, it would just cost something on the order of the US defense budget.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[RobertLTux]

lemme guess your father was the guy referred to in
"I know the presidents' chief scientific advisor, we were at MIT together. And, in a situation like this, you-you really don't wanna take the advice from a man who got a C minus in astrophysics. The presidents' advisors are... wrong. I'm right. "

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[heypete]

Satellites in relatively low, known earth orbits != fast-moving meteoroids significantly further from the earth (you'd have mere seconds to react and intercept them if you only detect them at the distance most satellites are located, so that's pretty infeasible).

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[tp1024]

The size of the debris is quite well known - less than the original asteroid. Reducing the size of the debris to half that of the original asteroid (5m instead of 10m), would have prevented damage on the ground - by having less mass (and thus energy) to begin with and by breaking up higher in the atmosphere, giving more distance and thinner air to propagate the shockwave. The trajectory will also follow the laws of physics - conservation of momentum most notably. The largest pieces would have the least change in their trajectories.

Why several days? Because a large object will be brighter than 2008 TC3. Twice the diameter means twice the distance at which you could find it. But discovery is limited mainly by instument availability. You can't find something if you can't look for it. The more often you survey the sky, the earlier you'll find a new object once it is bright enough. Seriously large objects like the Tunguska meteorite (about 60m) or 2012 DA14 could be found at least weeks ahead of time - in the case of 2012 DA-14 more than a year.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[osu-neko]

A few years ago I would have said "only in America", but then Italy dragged geologists to court for not predicting an earthquake.

No one was ever taken to court for failing to predict an earthquake. People were taken to court for predicting there would be no earthquake. (Actually, neither of these oversimplifications is precisely true, but mine's quite a bit closer...)

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Sockatume]

Make no mistake, I'm all for a comprehensive sky survey and for interception of potentially dangerous objects, but you're glossing over a lot of things. It's not as simple as having more telescopes like those that spotted 2008 TC3; depending on what the chances of detecting an object of that size with that 'scope are (e.g. was it blindingly obvious with the 'scope pointed the right way, or a lucky observation) it might not scale up as easily as you'd like.

Supposing you successfully intercept the object, you do not know how it will fragment, much less how momentum will be partitioned between the fragments. What's the contingency plan if you turn a 60m object into one 50m object and one 10m object, and now have a reduced lead time (perhaps hours, depending on rocket prep time) to determine their new orbits? I'd much rather have a 60m object with a known landing ellipse (for want of the right term) we can respond to, than a 50m object on much less understood course.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Anonymous Coward]

Why several days? Because a large object will be brighter than 2008 TC3. Twice the diameter means twice the distance at which you could find it. But discovery is limited mainly by instument availability. You can't find something if you can't look for it. The more often you survey the sky, the earlier you'll find a new object once it is bright enough. Seriously large objects like the Tunguska meteorite (about 60m) or 2012 DA14 could be found at least weeks ahead of time - in the case of 2012 DA-14 more than a year.

We already have several automated surveys looking for larger meteors. You will find people have issues with your original claim because finding smaller ones like this or the one that hit before is much, much harder than finding the larger ones in the 10s to 100s of meters in size. For the larger ones, we already have surveys looking for them, which is part of why things like 2012 DA-14 are being found rather frequently now.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Anonymous Coward]

Some thing's capitalism solves

Apo'strophe's don't make plural word's (with exception's for 'single letter's and initiali'sm's)

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[niado]

The meteorite was several times larger than the last (and first ever) predicted impact in 2008.

Ah, no. The Russian meteor was estimated at around 10 tons, while the 2008 TC3 seems to have been around 80 tonnes. (Please forgive my inability to do unit conversion among the various tons.)

I doubt we will ever have (or at least, exercise) the ability to locate and track ~10 ton objects, which are somewhere around the size of a small bulldozer.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much about speed as it is about warning time and slew rate. And a meteor, unlike an ICBM, does not maneuver and you usually have days rather than minutes to intercept.

For comparison, NASA regularly hits small sections on *Mars* with it's probes. Computing the path of an incoming meteorite and putting enough mass in It's path to break it up is not that difficult, relatively speaking.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Rary]

No. They predicted a >0% chance of an earthquake but told people it was a 0% chance, resulting in people who were already preparing for an earthquake to stop their preparations.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[tp1024]

When the Associated Press releases a one-liner of some factoid, you're better of being critical. A 10ton object travelling at 15km/s doesn't have enough energy (about 0.3kt of TNT equivalent) to create a shockwave at more than 10km altitude that can destroy windows and blow out doors on the ground.

The Halifax explosion had ten times as much energy, that was released in much denser atmosphere, at one point and not along a track of at about 20km length. This just about managed to do similar damage at a distance of 16km. (Which is similar to the situation in Russia, where damage didn't just occur directly under the track of the asteroid.)

Given the much thinner atmosphere at this height and the fact that it was spread over such a long distance, it must have released more energy than the Halifax explosion. Anything less than 100ton mass is bogus, my guess is around 300-500 tons. (N.B.: my estimate at the time was made assuming a velocity of 10km/s, guessing up to 1000 tons.)

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[cyberchondriac]

Well, so far, to my knowledge, no one has ever sued a meteorologist for incorrectly predicting the weather which resulted in an unexpected flood or snowstorm or some other weather related hazard, so it seems unlikely.. (and would tie up the courts considering their track record of inaccuracy). It would set a bad precedent.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[legont]

Russians say 10 tons at 30 km/s which, if I am to believe WolframAlfa, is around 1 kiloton of TNT. Is it enough to blow windows if exploded at 20 km altitude?

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[MtViewGuy]

Wrong. The problem with this meteor was that when it enters the atmosphere at over 33,000 mph and is just smaller than a subcompact (A-segment) automobile, even our modern radars will have essentially NO warning before any potential impacts.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[tp1024]

I've written a more lengthy piece on this. In short: No way.

(Hint: The Hiroshima bomb (15kt) just about managed to break windows at 20km distance - and the altitude of breakup was at least 30km according to most sources.)

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[ehiris]

Invading a few countries over one rogue terrorists using our own planes to destroy a building is appropriate response but defending ourselves against a lot of very fast large rocks isn't? Nice to know that self-preservation is not really a goal of humanity.

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[DeadCatX2]

No. They predicted a >0% chance of an earthquake but told people it was a 0% chance, resulting in people who were already preparing for an earthquake to stop their preparations.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/23/world/europe/italy-quake-scientists-guilty

The experts determined that it was "unlikely" but not impossible that a major quake would take place, despite concern among the city's residents over recent seismic activity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/23/italian-scientist-earthquake-condemns-court

But [Claudio] Eva insisted neither he nor his colleagues had given any reassurances in their brief, 40-minute meeting. "We always maintained it was not possible to predict or exclude an earthquake," he said.

Now who do I believe, some guy named Rary on the Internet, or Jethro Mullen from CNN and Tom Kington from the Guardian?

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[isorox]

The problem with this is that the world is so litigation happy right now, that when a meteorite 'slips through the net' and kills one person, the workers at the observatories might get sued into oblivion.

Let's burn down the observatory so this never happens again!

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Anonymous Coward]

The relationship between energy, altitude and distance of damage for an atmospheric explosion is not simple and definitely not linear...

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Anonymous Coward]

Satellites are slow. You basically just said "Americans and Chinese can catch a baseball, therefore I can catch a bullet."

Re:The result of funding cuts for observatories

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are going by mass, it would have to be four times as large to detect it twice as far away. Visibility goes up as the square of the diameter, mass goes up as the cube.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Russian glaziers receive unexpected boon!

Re:In other news...

[jampola]

Especially so when I am reading reports of people intentionally smashing in windows in hope of compensation. Ahhh, sneaky f*ckin' Russians!

Re:In other news...

[Dunbal]

I don't get it. Break a window so that you can get - a new window. Are they that desperate for visitors out there?

Re:In other news...

[drankr]

You're "reading" this on Fox, I presume.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, CNN. Thanks

Re:In other news...

[Dr_Barnowl]

Break a crappy old window that doesn't fit it's frame and has a draught all the way around the edge, get a new piece of glass that fits? Bargain.

Re:In other news...

[Sockatume]

Even supposing there was a compensation scheme giving out free windows - and there isn't AFAIK - I'm not sure that most people would put up with having unheatable room in Russian in the winter for an indeterminate amount of time, just for the sake of a free pane of glass.

Re:In other news...

[shutdown -p now]

There are things other than glass that can be used to keep the heat in while the glass is not there.

Re:In other news...

[shutdown -p now]

As a Russian, regardless of where he's reading it, I can certainly believe it - although I'd expect it to be a few isolated cases.

Re:In other news...

[drankr]

Right, nothing like the lootin' and shootin' in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina.

The Good Kind of Bunny

[TheRealHocusLocus]

As a boy I began to explore the possibility of a planetary asteroid defense.

What a relief.

My teenage years were marked by bouts of Acute Cold War Survival Anxiety. I was prepared to explore and debate such things as, What effect and scope of all-out nuclear exchange? What are nearest likely strategic targets? Wind and ocean factors? Social and political conditions? When fallout arrives, how can you be sure your family is getting enough? If there is somewhere left to go, where to go? What to bring? Who to eat first?

I would listen to the daily English commentaries of Radio Moscow on shortwave. Lots of gesticulation and predictable posturing. Then I would listen to President Reagan: lots of gesticulation and predictable posturing.

Minutes to midnight.

I worked survival scenarios; collected books, studied maps, stockpiled chocolate. I'd be tuned to the local radio station when they conducted the EBS test every week... as in, "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. It is only a test." When it was preempted by a baseball game I was the only one who ever called to complain. Because no one else did.

Survival aside, what could one actually do to address the threat of nuclear war? Sneak around gathering warhead, missile and fission lump and muck... head for Mount Doom, toss them in and run like hell?

I tried to debate the issue with others but didn't get far. The objective, they would begin, is to prevent nuclear war. "Can be done, but not a good approach." Oh really, they'd muse, explain. "Considering the angles and who the players are... there is only one tool we know of that is capable of preventing nuclear war: nuclear war."

Smiling, I suppose you think that's funny. "No, I'm serious. It would work. For sure."

End of debate.

Or... continuing the debate later by myself, with myself... what if, instead of preparing for nuclear war... we just choose not to have one? All day. Every day. It was easy to see that this tactic might 'save the day' so to speak. But the real beauty of such a regimen is that the benefits actually accrue over time. A day? O.K. A week? Great. A whole year without nuclear war? Splendid!

As it turns out that's exactly what we did. It would be silly to claim credit for the ultimate success of this simple idea; but I did think it up first.

And I did my part... right to this day.

No matter how hectic the day or late the hour, I always set aside enough time to not start a nuclear war. As should you. I admit at times it may have been a little one -- say, a hypothetical series of tactical bursts along the border of two small imbecile countries. It never works. The dust settles and there is the border again, right where they left it. Wider, even.

On Friday I fail to start three successive wars, each one more horrifyingly pointless than the last; to clear my slate for the weekend. With nuclear survival addressed and prevention unnecessary -- had all this extra free time.

So I kissed plutonium goodbye and set my sights on iron, nickel and ice; humble ingredients to be sure but pretty effective when you stir in mass, velocity and plenty of aftermath.

If you see one mushroom cloud you've seen them all, if one could be so lucky. They only seem to come in one flavor, up up and away.

Planetary impacts though are serious fun.

Exposing the earth's mantle -- even a tiny bit -- is always a fiery crowd pleaser. Then a rain of molten pellets begins, right on schedule; everyone gets to take home a souvenir. There is angle of entry: like playing spin-the-bottle, with God. Bad news for those in the cheap seats.

I like best a night-side volley into the ocean. The shores of surrounding continents are ringside seats; you can start the show early, since most of the audience is already there. Toss a few little ones, now they're watching. Different metals make pretty colors as they tear through the atmosphere.

Clever surprises. Eyes with telescopes will see here... a Really Big One! In all the humanitie

Re:The Good Kind of Bunny

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in your cage, Larry Niven!

Re:The Good Kind of Bunny

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Gentlemen, the Hammer has fallen.

Re:The Good Kind of Bunny

[Anonymous Coward]

(+6, Funny, Understated, and Underrated)

Missle Strike

[Westwood0720]

I wonder how many stared at that thing and were waiting for the giant mushroom cloud to appear. Like Sarah Connor at the playground.

Russian capitalism

[gold928s]

Selling an apartment in Chelyabinsk! URGENT!!! Call to 23-25 ask for Sergey

The vapour trail was visible from Meteosat-10

[dcowart]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eumetsat/8474853633/

"An image from the SEVIRI instrument aboard our Meteosat-10 geostationary satellite. The vapour trail left by the meteor that was seen near Chelyabinsk in Russia on 15th February 2013 is visible in the centre of the image."

Re:The vapour trail was visible from Meteosat-10

[jampola]

Thanks!

Re:30 years ago? End of world.

[tp1024]

No, the world surely would not have ended. We know for a fact that meteorite impacts have been observed by satellites designed to warn against nuclear weapons. The first few scared the shit out of operators, because the energy released by such meteorites is on the order of several kilotons. But neither Russians nor Americans were stupid.

I love meteors...

[Anonymous Coward]

BOOM de yada.,..

Re:Video of impact site

[NeoTron]

Buuuuullshit, AC , that's a video of The Door To Hell, near a village in Turkmanistan called Derweze

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_Hell

Re:Video of impact site

[dcowart]

Nope, that's actually the "Gates of Hell" in Turkmenistan. http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-gates-of-hell

Few more vids from different places

[Kopcap]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCawTYPtehk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3BGn012dhw

Warning: strong language.

It does nothing to those composed of ice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Explosives have been tried on icebergs... no effective result. Ice is one of the strongest structures ever.

You "solution" would only work with relatively low mass small meteors... but not large ones.

Re:It does nothing to those composed of ice.

[Sockatume]

Meteors are not predominantly made of ice.

Re:It does nothing to those composed of ice.

[Electricity Likes Me]

No, they're made of iron that survives uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

Re:It does nothing to those composed of ice.

[Salvage]

There are four types of meteor composition; roughly ice, carbon, stone, iron. These types notably differ in how deep they can get into the atmosphere before they shatter (explode), with shatter altitude varying mostly by size. Iron meteors generally get all the way to the surface intact. And any part that hits the ground counts as a meteorite.

Re:It does nothing to those composed of ice.

[PlusFiveTroll]

No, they're made of iron that survives uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

No. most are made of stones that accreted from dust particles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrite

It's just iron meteors are much more likely to survive to the surface then chondrites. Stony meteors tend to explode in the atmosphere, like we saw today.

Re:It does nothing to those composed of ice.

[heypete]

Actually, most of them are essentially rocks. Iron meteorites or combinations of stone and a significant percentage of iron only make up around 6% of all meteorites.

Re:It does nothing to those composed of ice.

[cyberchondriac]

And nickel.

Rockets

[Anonymous Coward]

They are also unconfirmed reports in some europead newspapers that russian army shot at the meteorite with rockets.

Re:Video of impact site

[Westwood0720]

Hah. I saw that video and thought for sure it was the impact site of the meteor. Never heard of the Door to Hell. Had me fooled.

Re:Missile Strike

[hoboroadie]

I wonder how many saw this coming and dove for cover. It doesn't take much to keep your skin from getting a flash burn. And for God's sake look away.

RIA Novosti coverage

[QuietLagoon]

Here: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130215/179481049/Meteorite-Shower-Hits-Russia-Kazakhstan.html

Re:30 years ago? End of world.

[Dunbal]

No. Nuclear bombs don't produce a fireball streaking across the sky. The lack of radiation is also a big clue. Nuclear weapons are designed to kill, not frighten people and shatter windows. You'd have to be pretty insane to confuse this for a nuclear attack.

Scary

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess, while scientists can see the larger ones now, and predict their orbit with a fair degree of accuracy,
they can't (yet) see the cloud of smaller rocks that may be following/ahead of the "primary" rock.

Scary.

CAPTCHA = together

Re:Scary

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA

First of all, I do not think this is related in any way to the asteroid 2102 DA14! For one thing, this occurred about 16 hours before DA14 passes. At 8 kilometers per second that’s nearly half a million kilometers away from DA14. That puts it on a totally different orbit. For another, from the lighting, time of day, and videos showing the rising Sun, it looks like this was moving mostly east-to-west. I may be off, but that’s how it looks. DA14 is approaching Earth from the south, so any fragment of that rock would also appear to move south-to-north. So again, I think this is unrelated to 2012 DA14. But wow, what a huge coincidence!

500Mm and the wrong direction means they are unrelated.

Six meter impact crater

[hoboroadie]

Woot!
First Tunguska, now this. Some folks are just lucky.

Re:Six meter impact crater

[White Flame]

They cover a gigantic chunk of land, so that bumps their statistical odds quite a bit.

Re:Six meter impact crater

[0111 1110]

Also Tunguska was more than 3000 km to the east of Chelyabinsk. Having said that Mother Russia does seem to be lucky when it comes to meteors.

Calling Russian /.ers!

[tippe]

What do our new overlords look like? Are they friendly or have they enslaved you and are using your liquefied remains as fuel for their machines of war? Should I panic now, or can I wait until after lunch?

Wait, how am I going to know that your response is really from you, and not from one of your new overlords impersonating you? I think it's safest if just start panicking now; just as soon as I'm done checking the other /. articles....

Re:Calling Russian /.ers!

[vivala]

Lay down your weapons, no reason to panic. This is just the new Pope coming.

Re:Calling Russian /.ers!

[Culture20]

First Reaver Pope. Never thought I'd live to see the day. That Papal Conclave is really progressive.

Re:Calling Russian /.ers!

[Anonymous Coward]

The new Pope is coming in a 12 year old boy right now.

Re:Calling Russian /.ers!

[denzacar]

All hail Space Pope!

Typical cover...

[erroneus]

If I learned anything from watching Stargate SG-1, it's that everything that happens in space is explained as "a meteor."

Obvious joke

[dkleinsc]

In Soviet Russia, asteroids play YOU!

Nice choice of strike zone

[OzPeter]

Not so totally unrelated to the article, the meteor strike wasn't too far from one of the biggest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation.

Mayak

ballistics

[v1]

Meteors and ICMBs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) both travel on "ballistic" trajectories. I.E. when they're coming down, they don't change speed or course under their own power. This makes it very easy (relatively, for people that do it for a living) to track their point of origin. This would clearly be coming from space, not from another continent.

What interests me the most here is why wasn't this all over the news? We see posts about twice a year talking about the next "near miss" we're going to have. So what happened with this one? Didn't they catch it? Or did they catch it, realize it was going to hit, and decide not to tell anybody? It would be a lot more interesting to find out details on it being known, covered up, and an intercept attempted. (and possibly successfully)

Continuing on that tangent, hollywood tells us from Independence Day "and turn one dangerous falling object into many?" In other words, blowing it up doesn't immediately lower it's total combined mass, so is it a good idea or a bad idea? I suppose if you start with something massive enough to get through the atmosphere and hit dirt, if you have a chance to blow it up into say a dozen smaller pieces that have a good chance of burning up in the atmosphere, that'd be a good option. Even if you busted it up it up into say four smaller pieces, their surface area to mass ratio goes way up and the four that make it to the ground should have burned off more mass and impact with less energy than the original one would have.

But rather than trying to play an armchair quarterback, I'm just askin' the questions, I'll leave answering those questions to the "rocket scientists".

Re:ballistics

[MickyTheIdiot]

There were loudmouths pissed off about a boat breaking down.

At least that was why CNN's coverage was lousy.

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Meteors like this are a lot smaller than the near-misses that end up in the news. Being able to find, track and see where smaller meteors that result in fireballs but don't reach the ground with any significant force (or at all) is much harder. It was done recently for one that fell over Africa, and that was treated as a big deal as it was by far the smallest one tracked and the first tracked before it hit. But that is more the exception than the rule at the moment for rather small ones. Additionally, predicting where it will go once it hits the air is much more difficult than tracking it in space (not impossible... but does result in some large landing ellipses for shallow angle ones with unknown shapes).

Re:ballistics

[goodmanj]

We see posts about twice a year talking about the next "near miss" we're going to have. So what happened with this one? Didn't they catch it? Or did they catch it, realize it was going to hit, and decide not to tell anybody? It

We don't spot 'em all. We've got several active asteroid search programs going, which have discovered thousands of near-earth asteroids, but there are many thousands more. One of the triumphs of 21st-century science is that we now know where almost all of the "end of the world" and "destroy a large country" km-sized near-earth asteroids are. But we think we've only found about half of the "annihilate a city" 300-m sized ones, and most of the mere "hydrogen-bomb" 100-m sized ones remain unknown. This meteor was *much* smaller than that -- I'd guess only a couple meters across. There are probably *millions* of those out there, and they're too small to see at all unless they make a close pass of the EArth.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/gallery/neowise/pia14734.html
http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/

Re:ballistics

[niado]

What interests me the most here is why wasn't this all over the news? We see posts about twice a year talking about the next "near miss" we're going to have. So what happened with this one? Didn't they catch it? Or did they catch it, realize it was going to hit, and decide not to tell anybody? It would be a lot more interesting to find out details on it being known, covered up, and an intercept attempted. (and possibly successfully)

Well, this one likely went un-detected a least until it entered atmosphere, since it is really very small (I read an estimate of 10 tons, and the 2012 DA14 asteroid is somewhere around 190,000 metric tons, for comparison).

Re:ballistics

[eth1]

What interests me the most here is why wasn't this all over the news? We see posts about twice a year talking about the next "near miss" we're going to have. So what happened with this one? Didn't they catch it? Or did they catch it, realize it was going to hit, and decide not to tell anybody? It would be a lot more interesting to find out details on it being known, covered up, and an intercept attempted. (and possibly successfully)

Well, TFS says it's not related to 2012DA14, but maybe if everyone wasn't fixated on that one, someone might have seen this one...

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. My favorite scene in Independence Day was when they got to the asteroid and Denzel Washington killed those two aliens and was all like "Welcome to Mars, man! Would you like to know more?"

Re:ballistics

[Vitriol Angst]

I think that "blowing up" an asteroid the size of a bus, or the size of an Oil Tanker would be a good idea; turns it into chunks that will burn up.

However -- once the size of that object gets larger -- the impact is probably less overall damage than the heating potential of millions of smaller objects with the same mass.

Like a shotgun versus a small calibre bullet -- you have more chance of survival if the bullet just makes the one hole (not accounting for those tumbling or soft head bullets).

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Armageddon! Independence day had aliens. This, is crucial.

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Stick to car analogies. That was horrible.

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Meteors and ICMBs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) both travel on "ballistic" trajectories. I.E. when they're coming down, they don't change speed or course under their own power.

But that's wrong...
Most modern ICBMs and even shorter range missiles have MAneuverable Re-entry Vehicles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARV) that use jet vanes, deployable fins, etc to make mid-flight course corrections for various reasons. They are usually intended to increase the overall range of a system by extending the terminal phase of guidance through the flattening of final trajectory angles. The other chief purpose to defeat intercept systems like the ones you mentioned in your post.

You can certainly tell where something came from by watching its launch, boost, and orbit phases, but you can't accurately discern a missile's origin from the payload's terminal phase alone.

Re:ballistics

[Sperbels]

What interests me the most here is why wasn't this all over the news? We see posts about twice a year talking about the next "near miss" we're going to have. So what happened with this one? Didn't they catch it? Or did they catch it, realize it was going to hit, and decide not to tell anybody?

Because these incidents are fairly common and don't cause any harm. Objects this small are too small to track, and not worth tracking either. This object was probably no bigger than a car. The dangerous ones are as big as mountains...and bigger

And Jesus...for the last time...there's no conspiracy to hide asteroids on collision courses with the earth. The information regarding asteroid orbits is totally public well before we have gathered enough information to make an assessment on whether they'll hit the earth. NASA does not have a monopoly on this information, nor do they control it. There are thousands of professionals and amateurs all contributing data on asteroid orbits nightly. If a huge asteroid is going to hit us, a lot of people would know. There is absolutely no way to keep that quiet. It certainly wouldn't be worth suppressing knowledge of a car sized asteroid, even if it was headed straight at New York...it is a not a threat.

Re:ballistics

[celtic_hackr]

You do realize you are speaking of a rock roughly the size of a large van or small delivery truck travelling in space at extreme speeds that once they hit the atmosphere are hypersonic speeds. There aren't any designated travel lanes to look out for in space, and tryin to spot a rock the size of a truck in a 360 degree spherical space of infinite size is a lot harder than finding a sewing needle in a haystack. So, you know it'd be really freaking amazing if they actually did know about this.

On another note Independence day was about an Alien invasion. I think you might be thinking along the lines of the Armegeddon film and it's ilk. There are many issues with blow it up into littler pieces. But that idea is mostly bad for a rock of any considerable size. This meteorite is estimated to be only a few meters in size, maybe 10 tons. The football field size DA14 headed for a "safe" flyby (I'm still waiting to see if it happens to hits a satellite or two on it's way by), would produce hundreds or maybe thousands of rocks this size. While they would be unlikely to do much "surface" damage, if it passed over any metropolitan area you could probably expecte 10s or 100s of thousands injuries and possibly some fatalities and 10s to 100s of millions in property damage.

A better course is to shove to a different trajectory. Like a game of billiards. Although, I'm not happy about that idea much either. Too many variables on unwanted side affects.

Re:ballistics

[Sez Zero]

Yep. My favorite scene in Independence Day was when they got to the asteroid and Denzel Washington killed those two aliens and was all like "Welcome to Mars, man! Would you like to know more?"

Best comment ever.

Re:ballistics

[asylumx]

What interests me the most here is why wasn't this all over the news?

It is. Seriously, everyone is talking about it. What the hell are you looking at? It's on the front page on every news org's site I can think of.

Re:ballistics

[tibit]

It's was a tiny thing. It was, demonstrably, not only not worth tracking because it did no real damage (sorry, what they got is not "real" damage), but it was so tiny it was next to impossible to track.

Basically until you have a crater and a seismic shockwave, there's nothing to worry about in real terms -- whatever effort you'd spend on those tiny pieces of debris will cost more natural resources than any losses suffered when it hits. Once you're down to a small enough object, tracking it is a net waste of resources. The smaller the size, the more of a waste it becomes.

Re:ballistics

[tibit]

Exactly. If there's no crater and no seismic shockwave, it's of no concern. Life goes on. Enjoy the fireworks when they happen.

Re:ballistics

[G00F]

I'd rather you shoot at me with birdshot at 50m away than even a 22lr at 100 yards.

The multiple smaller masses energy dissipates faster in our atmosphere.

Not to mention in asteroid, as it enters our atmosphere, there is more surface area, thus more of its mass gets burned up before impact, if impact even occurs.

Re:ballistics

[dvice_null]

> But we think we've only found about half of the "annihilate a city" 300-m sized ones

Not only that, but e.g. one 400-m sized one might hit the earth in a couple of months, but we don't know for sure whether it will hit or not, because last observation for it was in year 2008. It is very unlikely that it would hit us, but still... we don't know. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2008uv99.html

Re:ballistics

[dbIII]

What interests me the most here is why wasn't this all over the news?

It's in the news in Australia, but from what I've seen US news has very little international content.

Re:ballistics

[isorox]

What interests me the most here is why wasn't this all over the news? We see posts about twice a year talking about the next "near miss" we're going to have. So what happened with this one? Didn't they catch it? Or did they catch it, realize it was going to hit, and decide not to tell anybody?

Because these incidents are fairly common and don't cause any harm. Objects this small are too small to track, and not worth tracking either. This object was probably no bigger than a car. The dangerous ones are as big as mountains...and bigger

Obviously the mountain sized ones (or even swimming pool sized ones) are terrible, but this one wasn't exactly a flash bang - look at Images 3, 4, 6 and 8

Re:ballistics

[cusco]

Trillion dollar military "defense" budget, and not a penny of that goes to defending us against something like this. Imagine if this had happened during the Cold War, the first assumption would have been a failed nuclear strike. For that matter, if it had blown up over Kashmir the Pakistani and Indian militaries would probably assume the same thing today.

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If there's no crater and no seismic shockwave, it's of no concern. Life goes on. Enjoy the fireworks when they happen.

K, here's the seismic event: USGS Seismograph. Magnitude 2.7ish. 1000 hospitalized. Are we concerned yet?

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. My favorite scene in Independence Day was when they got to the asteroid and Denzel Washington killed those two aliens and was all like "Welcome to Mars, man! Would you like to know more?"

Um, it was Will Smith.

Re:ballistics

[Dahamma]

Why would anyone want to spend spend any money, let alone trillions, on "defending" against a meteor that basically broke a bunch of windows and didn't cause any fatalities?

And even the many injuries were almost all caused by people who, when seeing a big explosion, naively went to their windows not realizing the shockwave was a minute or two behind. Pretty sure a few PSAs on TV would be as effective prevention as military hardware for that.

Re:ballistics

[cusco]

A slightly different trajectory, bringing it in steeper so that it broke up just above the city or hit the ground, could have been devastating. Far worse, re-read my last sentence. The firestorms caused by a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India would be enough to set of a 'nuclear winter', somehow I don't think that a few PSAs would do much about that.

Re:ballistics

[Dahamma]

According to reports a meteor event this size happens once every 50-100 years. Still don't think that's a reason to waste money when they are so many other natural and man-made disasters with so much more potential for death and destruction (not to mention all of those dying from preventable causes like starvation, disease, and war).

Re:ballistics

[Sperbels]

Magnitude 2.7ish. 1000 hospitalized. Are we concerned yet?

1000 "hospitalized" for minor cuts from glass. No, not too concerned.

Re:ballistics

[avgjoe62]

Wherever you are right now, turn your head and look up at the sky. If you look carefully, you will see a bright streak cutting across the sky. But don't worry it's not an asteroid - that is the joke, powered by sarcasm, whooshing high over your head. You, my friend, are perfectly safe and never have to worry about that humor exploding anywhere near you.

Re:ballistics

[cusco]

Guess you're right. Better that the Pentagon get a trillion dollars to prevent an illiterate goatherd from blowing up a private corporation's oil pipeline in someone else's country than prevent the extinction of all life forms higher than rats. Sorry, my priorities were temporarily out of whack.

Re:ballistics

[Dahamma]

I never said the current military spending was a good thing, so your point is a bit of a straw man. I agree that the US military budget (and recent expenditures on campaigns) is absurd for the price/effectiveness ratio, and that tens of millions of lives around the world could have been saved (or hundreds of millions improved) for all that was wasted in the last decade.

But yeah, I guess your priorities are somewhat out of whack. Reduce the Pentagon budget, absolutely. And then first feed the 500M+ starving/underfed people in the world and eradicate the dozens of completely preventable diseases that kill another 30M *a year*. Then maybe work on early warning, safety, and disaster management for the natural disasters that happen frequently all over the world (earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, floods, etc) After THAT we can worry about re-encting Armageddon movies...

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

to be clear your thinking of the wrong movie Independence day was about alien locusts coming to take over our planet then will smith and jeff goldblum flew the roswell craft to the mother ship to destroy them.

You guys are thinking of deep impact and morgan freeman.

Denzel washington has never been in an asteroid movie or on mars...

Re:ballistics

[riverat1]

At a speed of over 40,000 mph when it entered the atmosphere it was going a lot faster than any ICBM.

Re:ballistics

[riverat1]

It really isn't possible to defend against a meteor this small at this time. They don't even bother to look for them.

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

That does raise an interesting question: Would the Russian Perimeter system (automatic counter-nuke launcher) have mistaken this asteroid for a nuclear blast? From what I read the system was almost never armed anyway but would it have been triggered by a meteor strike when it's online?

Re:ballistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, and it wasn't Mars - it was Earf.

Re:ballistics

[RockDoctor]

What interests me the most here is why wasn't this all over the news?

Errrr, it was on international news within about an hour of the event. It just so happened that I was up early and watching. How much more "all over the news" do you want?

It may have been different by the time that the terminator got round to your country and you got up. I was jet-lagged somewhat due to having come in from a couple of time-zones east, so I was up unusually early.

Re:ballistics

[RockDoctor]

Why would anyone want to spend spend any money, let alone trillions, on "defending" against a meteor that basically broke a bunch of windows and didn't cause any fatalities?

Because it's definitely got a lot of big brothers and cousins out there, and when one of them comes calling, if we don't have something set up which we know works, then we, as a species, may very well be dead.

But you probably know that, and consider your low taxes this year more important than your species survival next century. That's your choice, but don't try lying to yourself about what you're doing.

Re:ballistics

[goodmanj]

You've got it all backwards. You invest in *finding* the threats first; then, if you find a threat, you pay for the defense. Otherwise you've spent a lot of money on a weapon that you have no idea how to aim, that might not have any targets worth shooting at, and which might be misused in the wrong hands.

And yes, we are spending money to search for near-earth asteroids. ( http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/gallery/neowise/pia14734.html [nasa.gov] ) And as I said upthread, we've found almost all of the ones which could be species-enders and ruled them out. Now we're hunting down at the level of city-killers. There are still threats out there, but not existential ones that justify a zillion-dollar gun more likely to be abused than used.

So cut it with the hyperbole.

Re:ballistics

[goodmanj]

Actually, for meteorites this size, there is a pretty good defense. You just surround your planet with a 100-km-thick layer of gas, which will slow down and vaporize the meteorite before it hits the ground. Somebody should get on this ASAP.

Re:ballistics

[cusco]

We've found most of the ones which have a short orbital period in the plane of the rest of the planets. We haven't found 1/10,000 of the comets, and haven't even checked for asteroids with long period and/or eccentric orbits. We also don't know how often transients arrive from outside our solar system. Your confidence is extremely premature.

Re:ballistics

[cusco]

You're assuming that all meteors will hit the atmosphere at a shallow angle, which isn't the case. Nor do all small meteors fragment easily either. Check out what happened in Carancas, Peru, in 2007. An object less than three meters wide left a crater five meters deep and thirteen meters wide. Fortunately Carancas is in the middle of nowhere, Tacna, Arequipa, Puno, Juliaca, Arica and La Paz are all within a couple of hundred kilometers and if it had fallen in any one of those the death toll would have been in the scores or hundreds. (In the case of Juliaca it wouldn't have been much of a loss, though.)

Re:ballistics

[strikethree]

On another note Independence day was about an Alien invasion. I think you might be thinking along the lines of the Armegeddon film and it's ilk.

I do not think you remember Independence Day very well. The presidential adviser was all gung-ho about shooting down one of the alien spaceships with a nuke and the general responds, "and risk turning one large object into many small falling objects" (paraphrased). That is what the OP was talking about when he mentioned Independence Day.

1000 miles due south

[way2trivial]

do the math.. a 1000 miles away (radius) equates 3,141,590 sq miles to track

for something that occurs in 30 seconds... and has a cross section of a few feet.

here is a nice 1000 mile circle
http://reyscars.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/1000-mile-radius-map.jpg

examine that entire region for a speck about 20-50 feet wide....

Re:1000 miles due south

[LDAPMAN]

Actually not that hard. We've had radars since the very early 70's that can do it easily. Intercepting it is the hard part....seeing it is easy.

Re:1000 miles due south

[DarwinSurvivor]

Radar doesn't work 1000 miles away.

Re:1000 miles due south

[LDAPMAN]

Yes, it does. Google OTHB. There are many others. I know since I used to maintain them.

Re:1000 miles due south

[DarwinSurvivor]

Which scans in a horizontal area, detecting meteors requires something than scans a *volume*.

Huge Meteor Blazes Across Sky Over Russia; Hundred

[vivala]

Of course it's too early to say, but i think that is a not surprise we could not detect a 20-30m (10ton) object coming our way, especially now that all eyes are on 2012DA14. Object was too small and too quick and came from the 'wrong' direction. And yes, the answer is increase our early warning budget and seriously work out a planetary protection system, or next time Tunguska2 can be knocking at the door of some populated area for a change (or worse, on the continental shelf, so the tsunami can hit multiple locations).

Will we recognize an alien ship from ...

[fygment]

... the debris? Repurposing an asteroid for interstellar travel seems a far easier way of constructing a large ship; simply tunnel out the living spaces, strap on a propulsion system, and you're on your way. Best part? Early warning systems in alien solar systems will not react as you will be classified as normal space debris.

Re:Will we recognize an alien ship from ...

[dywolf]

even worse, its ready made space artillery.

Re:Will we recognize an alien ship from ...

[Sockatume]

Starship design optimises for minimum mass (mass, material choice), maximum available space (size), and optimum use thereof (shape). With an asteroid you have no control over material, are bounded in size and shape, and the minimum mass is achieved by sculpting out the shape of a conventional starship.

Re:Will we recognize an alien ship from ...

[tlambert]

Starship design optimises for minimum mass (mass, material choice), maximum available space (size), and optimum use thereof (shape). With an asteroid you have no control over material, are bounded in size and shape, and the minimum mass is achieved by sculpting out the shape of a conventional starship.

You mean *our* proposed starship designs, and mostly because of our technological level, and how fleeting our lives are, such that we have this unreasonable desire to travel at relativistic speeds so that we can get places within our lifetimes. A group mind, or inherited memories, or just plain better longevity, would render the speed issues moot for any form of interstellar travel: "Gentlebeings, please return your tray tables to their upright, locked position; the pilot indicates we will be landing in only another 15,000 years". A tech level that is one above ours on the Kardashev scale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) would have no problem flinging a bunch of its people on a 100,000 year journey on a giant rock.

Note that I do not believe that this is a case of aliens, only that the parent is offering rather humanocentric arguments against it. My personal opinion here is based on Occam's razor: a meteor is the simplest explanation which fits the observed facts, as reported so far.

Re:Will we recognize an alien ship from ...

[goodmanj]

I don't care what tech level you're at or what you look like: there's still an m in the kinetic energy equation. Whatever your transportation goals are, they get more difficult the heavier your vehicle is.

Re:Will we recognize an alien ship from ...

[sysrammer]

I don't care what tech level you're at or what you look like: there's still an m in the kinetic energy equation. Whatever your transportation goals are, they get more difficult the heavier your vehicle is.

Perhaps they've found some way to produce energy from mass.

Re:Will we recognize an alien ship from ...

[gl4ss]

sure, if the aliens are super advanced, adhering to known laws of physics, but at the same super lazy on shaving time from their thousand year trip to unknown destination(having reserves in that case is always a good idea unless you're just going there for a ritual suicide).

kardashev scale is a bunch of bullshit. which isn't surprising since it's used for grading fantasies in regards to each other (is Q or the Dr more powerful and advanced???? who the fuck cares they've both dealt the do-anything-anytime-anyhow cards).

btw there's been plenty of "designs" about using asteroids as space ships, so it's been on potential designs tables. but even in scifi that design needs the magic card to be even somewhat smart way of going about things.

In Soviet Russia...

[ElementOfDestruction]

In Soviet Russia
Meteor land on YOU!

Bruce Willis would have stopped this.

Re:30 years ago? End of world.

[PlusFiveTroll]

Depends what day it occurred on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis

Something like this can get easily misinterpreted.

UNLREATED EH?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what was it? Nobody has yet to explain WHAT it was and WHERE it came from if it is UNRELATED.

Re:UNLREATED EH?

[Sockatume]

It's not like space is famously chock full of rocks or anything like that.

Re:UNLREATED EH?

[niado]

So, what was it? Nobody has yet to explain WHAT it was and WHERE it came from if it is UNRELATED.

It was a meteor. It came from space.

Or it's the bugs...

[Thruen]

"There's nothing random or light about this, someone made a mistake!"

great...russians with superpowers

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately being russians they will be totally impractical, just like the current russian superpowers of chess, wrestling, mathematics, and vodka consumption

Entry, not re-entry

[leandrod]

No, they're made of iron that survives uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

Something that never left cannot reenter.

For the World is Hollow and I have touched the SKY

[Thud457]

You're sure that was a Russian interceptor missile that hit it?

I imagine it was shot down by an ancient meteor defence facility left behind when the reptoids retreated to their underground lairs.

I have a vivid imagination.

Re:30 years ago? End of world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, something like this happened forty-one years ago this summer. Over the Western U.S. During the height of the Cold War. No panic ensued. In fact, it didn't even make the news at the time.
Here's the analysis of the object:
http://fireball.meteorite.free.fr/meteor/en/7/1972-08-10/grand-teton/data
And the only existing film (Yes, film.) of the bolide:
http://fireball.meteorite.free.fr/meteor/en/7/1972-08-10/grand-teton/video

Re:30 years ago? End of world.

[Stone Rhino]

Re-entry vehicles from ICBMs do.

NOT related to DA14, please RFTA...

[GReaToaK_2000]

According to three of the articles I read the paths (vectors) of the inbound meteors are very different.

Stop the hysteria and read before you start freaking out.

Re:NOT related to DA14, please RFTA...

[PPH]

The aliens are executing a flanking maneuver.

Panic!

Still possible

[joh]

Not likely. DA14 is a few hours away and moving very fast... which means that it's still very far away.

If the basic orbit is similar, this is not only possible but probable. Could well be that DA14 is just the largest part of something that has broken up much earlier and there are smaller pieces that have spread apart in all directions quite a bit now.

Re:For the World is Hollow and I have touched the

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody knows that Tunguska was caused by Nikola Tesla testing out his prototype death ray.

Please don't feed the 8' mobile plants

[rjejr]

Isn't this how Day of the Triffids started?

Wrong space intruder movie?

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

"Continuing on that tangent, hollywood tells us from Independence Day "and turn one dangerous falling object into many?" In other words, blowing it up doesn't immediately lower it's total combined mass, so is it a good idea or a bad idea?"

Independence Day? That's the alien invasion movie, right? IIRC the aliens managed to park their starships well within Earth's cloud cover, so any crash would be at relatively low speed when compared to a meteor. I don't know which, but the more famous space boulder movies are Armageddon and Deep Impact.

Somebody SAVE them

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on!

"This video has been removed by the user"

[X0563511]

... I have to ask, why? Why would someone just decide to remove the video?

Re:"This video has been removed by the user"

[del_diablo]

I want to watch as well :3

Broken windows

[ballpoint]

Pazjalusta ! A great opportunity to study the broken window fallacy in a post-communist economic context.

Americans Panic!!!

[arthurpaliden]

Buy more guns.

trollin' it oldskool, eh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING : GOATSE link!

Re:Is this because of

[Anonymous Coward]

Global Warming caused the atmosphere to expand sufficiently for the asteroid to intercept it.

Why upmodded?...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the parent post a +5 informative? The missing of a metoer like this has nothing to do with funding cuts for observatories. There are already several automated whole sky scans continuously on going to look for, among other things, near Earth asteroids. And there are plenty of plans for expanding or upgrading such projects. The reason meteors like this typically don't get seen is because they are quite small. Estimates of the one over Russia puts it almost an order of magnitude smaller in mass than 2008 TC3 that was observed shortly before it hit Africa, which itself was a whole three orders smaller in mass than the 2012 DA14 that has made the news for its close passing of Earth.

Astronomers are not particularly concerned about asteroids of this size at the moment, especially since they happen every couple of years, and the benefit versus cost of trying to track this size is not particularly high. Larger asteroids on the other hand are being much better tracked, with estimates of the probabilities of missing one or estimates of how likely we are to see them days or years out ahead of time (assuming there isn't one that is significantly darker than a previously observed asteroids of a given size...).

Find that Baby!

[TheFakeMcCoy]

He will defy their gravity. His dense molecular structure will make him strong. He'll be fast. Virtually invulnerable.

No point destroying it in atmosphere

[ZombieBraintrust]

I also don't see much difference in a missle blowing up the asteroid and the atmosphere or land destroying the asteroid. In both case your going to have a shockwave. You would have to destroy it in space to minimize damage.

Was it really a meteor?

[firecode]

It seems unlikely that nobody couldn't predict its downfall (it had to be rather larger to be visible).

Another possible scenario is a retired spy satellite.

Largest country in the world...

[denzacar]

Almost twice the size of each of the next five countries on the list - except Brazil and Australia. It's MORE than twice the size of those countries. And Australia is a continent.

Or try it like this. On one side of the country, in Europe, Russia borders countries like Norway and Finland - on the other side, in Asia, it borders Japan.
And on top of that, it also borders USA (Alaska) across the Bering Strait.

Russia is really, REALLY big. Lot's of space to catch nearly anything that falls into northern hemisphere.

Re:Largest country in the world...

[GameboyRMH]

Russia, largest country in the world
All other countries are small like little girls
Russia, #1 exporter of web videos
All other countries have inferior web videos

Why so long for the sonic boom?

[DSS11Q13]

There are several videos on youtube now of people filming the clouds and then the explosion (assuming sonic boom). Why did the boom take place so much later? At the speed of sound, even a sonic boom 30 miles away would only take a few seconds correct?

Re:Why so long for the sonic boom?

[nightfury]

The speed of sound at sea level is around 1125 ft/sec. There are 5280 ft in a mile. At a distance of 30 miles, that's a little under 141 seconds. Two minutes and twenty one seconds.

15 meters, 40 tonne...!

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this article on Nature.com the diameter is estimated to be 15 meters, with a mass of 40 tonne!

Well then, it has to be said...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd guess that most of the direct injuries happened when people ran to their windows to watch the flare and contrail. Looking at the videos, the sonic boom happened at least 27 seconds later: right when people would be clustered in front of the glass.

In Russia, windows break YOU.

2 asteroid explosions in 100 years?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Apparently Space Jesus hates Russia and communists. I'll be interested to hear Pat Robertson's comments.

Plane crash / highway video

[Smerta]

I believe this is the video you are referring to?

Those Russian drivers dont seem to be fazed by anything..

In other news!

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Scientists have noted that the area around the impact of the asteroid has been exhibiting anomalous features. Scientists have found objects within the region with strange physical properties, such as obsorption of radiation, anti-gravity... to which they now refer to as Artifacts. The military has been told to denote the region, 50km in radius around the impact, as the zone of isolation.

Due to the interest in these artifacts, and their strange properties, numerous individuals are now trying to get into this zone. These individuals are reffered to as STALKERs.

-Get out of here stalker.

Dashcams

[ThatsNotPudding]

In case anyone wondered why this was so well documented by dashcam, most Russian drivers have them solely for documentation of
1) murderously shitty drivers
2) attempted burglaries & kidnappings
3) crooked cops demanding bribes.

Most definitely not in that order.

This is the real story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.

This level of comet activity has been expected for quite some time. The incident levels have been going way up lately, and it's on schedule. There's a lot more to come.

The mechanisms are strongly suspected, (dark star), as are the expected results over the short and long term. And while this is disaster movie stuff, it's also just a slice of a larger story. Birth pains.

And believe it or not, it's all going well. So take it one step at a time and try not to be too afraid. This is all leading somewhere interesting and fun.

What can you do?

Above all, be nice to your neighbors and work on your inner stuff. The rest will sort itself out.

at last the place of the main imact is found:

[Max_W]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpXTOB40JCg

Re:at last the place of the main imact is found:

[TheSync]

That link is to video of the "Hole of Fire" or "Door to Hell" at Derweze, in the middle of the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan.

Soviet geologists were drilling at the site in 1971 and tapped into a cavern filled with natural gas. But the ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, leaving a hole with a diameter of 70 metres.

Fearing that the hole would lead to the release of poisonous gases, the team decided to burn it off.

It was hoped that the fire would use all the fuel within days, but the gas is still burning today.

some more new videos

[Max_W]

compilation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn_xtmdyB48

school evacuation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfoYW75u_Y

Dashcam marketing gone viral.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done, dashcamCo!

but are your windows blown out?

[fantomas]

but are you managing those temperatures with big holes where your windows used to be? will you have your windows wide open at midnight tonight?

Voice track

[tristes_tigres]

And for all you non-Russian speakers: almost nothing of the driver's commentary may be possibly printed in a newspaper.

Hey Obama!

[PPH]

We could have used that death star.

Holy Fricking Shit!!!!!

[Roachie]

Right now, without further delay we need to make sure that the worlds population of truck drivers, harley-davidson owners and oil well roughnecks are ready to spring into action to save us all.

Oh, and make sure Aerosmith in on speed-dial.

Re:30 years ago? End of world.

[Roachie]

Man, that is a long exposure photograph, intended to emphasize the luminosity of the reentry vehicles. Useful, that is, for marketing purposes, for wartime target estimation... not so much.

Re:30 years ago? End of world.

[Anonymous Coward]

The photo was tagged with "long exposure photo"