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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Russian meteor hit with force of 30 Hiroshima bombs
2013-02-16
The meteor that streaked across the skies over Russia in a blinding fireball on Friday exploded with a force about 30 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb, NASA scientists have said.

The 55-foot rock, said by Nasa to have a mass of 10,000 tonnes, plunged to Earth in the Urals region on Friday morning, causing shockwaves that injured 1,200 people and damaged thousands of homes in an event unprecedented in modern times.
In recent decades, at any rate. The Tunguska meteor was in 1908, which counts as modern times, even if they were Edwardian.
Nasa estimated that the energy released by the meteor's impact with the atmosphere was 500 kilotonnes, around 30 times the force of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It entered the atmosphere and broke up at an altitude of around 32 miles, causing a shockwave that blew out windows and set of car alarms in Chelyabinsk two and a half minutes later.

Divers were this morning searching the Chelyabinsk region's frozen Lake Chebarkul for a fragment of the meteorite. No fragments have been found in the region so far - despite some 20,000 rescuers and recovery workers being dispatched to help the hundreds of people injured.

An army of glaziers were also being transported to Chelyabinsk to urgently repair the thousands of broken windows in homes as night time temperatures fall below -15C.

Scientists from Nasa, the US space agency, estimated that the amount of energy released from impact with the atmosphere was about 30 times greater than the nuclear bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.
Posted by:tipper

#10  Lots of Vids out there - my favorite is the one that depicts the rock in all its big, wide smokey glory heading at an angle toward the video taker, + those that depict a "bright light" suddenly occurring all around different Personages like a potent Sun-exploding Solar Storm.

[NICHOLAS CAGE'S "KNOWING" here].

As per the former, iff it had been a Texas-sized asteroid + an [unlikely] very "slow-mover", it would had been sudden darkness, not sudden light. The rock would had covered the sky + the far horizon.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2013-02-16 20:58  

#9  I measured the delay on the camera from the start of the vid to the first boom.

It was 10K away 30s * 340M/s = 10K
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2013-02-16 19:55  

#8  Its a good thing for them Putin punches with the strength of 35 Hiroshima Bombs.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2013-02-16 18:31  

#7  In Russia, Space explores you.
Posted by: Grunter   2013-02-16 17:13  

#6  In Russia, ONE politician lies, and needs replacing.
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2013-02-16 16:56  

#5  Meteor ‘was new US weapons testÂ’, claims Russian MP
Zhirinovsky, who else!
Posted by: tipper   2013-02-16 16:19  

#4  James, your head, open it up a tad, it indeed had that force. Distance is a long ways, it's like say, ummmm..... 300 football fields stood on end, like 570 times higher than the PressBox (PIBT) at BearBryant Stadium.... it's way, way the fuck up there.

Posted by: Shipman   2013-02-16 15:23  

#3   It entered the atmosphere and broke up at an altitude of around 32 miles, causing a shockwave that blew out windows and set of car alarms in Chelyabinsk two and a half minutes later.

That's when the big flash happened. That's the point when air resistance became greater than the mass of the meteor resulting in the release of energy and the disintegration of the object. The vids distort the perception because they're all 2 dimensional and can't provide the perspective of true altitude.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2013-02-16 12:12  

#2  If the Meteor was that powerful, it didn't show it, I watched the tapes, one BOOM and it's over, maybe distance mitigated it?

No nuke simply blows out widows. It flattens the area, this didn't.

I think the reporters exaggerated, greatly.

Sorta like the reports it was shot down, also Lies.
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2013-02-16 12:00  

#1  And that was just a pebble, cosmically speaking.
Any word yet if it was a stony or iron meteor?
Posted by: bigjim-CA   2013-02-16 11:31  

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