Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
... hows your space program going.
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!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
According to some sources, the directions of the Russian meteor and DA14 are different, making the two events unlikely to be related.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Pfffft.
That was Putin skydiving from space.
Shirtless, because he's Putin.
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.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Zombies spotted in Chelyabinsk
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.
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."
www.rdex.net
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.
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.
>TFA
link?
Yep, just click it.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Its ok its just the real Iranian monkey coming home :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
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.
Siberia is big. It has more gravity. *runs!*
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Or military jets using a highway as a runway.
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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.
Actually dashcams are a requirement of insurance companies to insure a car.
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".
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
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.
Now draw a line from the ceiling. That's the trajectory of DA14. South-to-North.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
The enemy's gate is down.
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.
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.
[Citation Needed]
Russia: so bad even the universe throws rocks at it.
Blank until
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.