
Meteorite crash in Russia - SuccintWork
http://rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/
======
mmastrac
Here's a collection of insane videos of the event, some with the enormous
sonic boom:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIAm5hq8WWc>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA>

Can anyone translate what they are saying in the first one?

You can get a good idea of the new videos being posted using YouTube's "last
hour" filter:

[http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B0&filters=hour&lclk=hour)

~~~
creamyhorror
Here's a great dashcam video that captures the meteor arcing across its field
of vision and lighting up the scene more brightly than the sun like a nuclear
blast (first submitted to HN by dennisgorelik). I almost thought it was a
hoax, and even tried to examine the video for signs that it was CGI.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJOJ6B2XOyA>

The guy doesn't even say anything for a long while, just starts speeding up.

edit: Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy (Slate) think it's unrelated to the 2012DA14
asteroid, because of the timing gap and incorrect direction of travel.
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking_huge_meteor_explodes_over_russia.html)
This could have turned out very badly if the thing had hit the ground...could
we have caught this one, and why didn't we?

~~~
jevinskie
Can anyone explain why I see so many dashcam videos from Russia?

~~~
rdtsc
Corruption.

* Pedestrians are corrupt -- they throw themselves in front of your car then sue for damages.

* Other motorists are corrupt -- they lie about the accident facts

* Cops are corrupt -- easily bought off and bribed (or tapped through nepotism)

~~~
diminish
this was the exact explanation given by a driver with a dashcam to me. in
russia, most police do not feel responsible to organize traffic, help solve
deadlocks, and give service to citizens. they behave like a mob entitled to
rob you in a various ways due to false,confusing interpretation of legal
texts.

------
AlexanderZ
I happen to live 300km from the epicenter. The meteorite was seen in home town
as well. I made a list of all the videos I could find:
<http://say26.com/meteorite-in-russia-all-videos-in-one-place>

~~~
adaml_623
The video of the loading dock door blowing in is extraordinary.

~~~
walls
And of course it's the only one that seems to have been removed.

------
apaprocki
It takes events like this to highlight how awesome it is to have a large
number of people constantly recording video. Integrated dashcams with a
circular buffer should become ubiquitous standard equipment IMO.

1080p of first clip available on YouTube:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-0iwBEswE>

~~~
ics
Does everyone in Russia have a dashcam or something? It seems like every other
video I see on YouTube was recorded on one, and yet I don't know of anyone in
Japan or the US with one installed (parking cams don't count). It's a great
idea– I would probably get one if I still had a car, but it's amazing to me
just how prevalent they _seem_ in Russia. (Elsewhere too? I don't know. I'd
love it if someone could enlighten me.)

~~~
kumarm
Yes apparently to avoid people jumping infront of car and suing the driver:
<http://www.animalnewyork.com/2012/russian-dashcam/>

~~~
abcd_f
No, not because of the jumpers.

It's to capture the car to car accidents and the road rage incidents. Too many
people have bought their driving licenses and drive as if they are the only
people on the road. Too many of these come from the criminal background and
won't shy away from expressing their dissatisfaction with your driving ethics
and what not. Now there's a dashcam for that.

------
ChuckMcM
That is an amazing event. I am not sure I buy the meteorite story. Has anyone
checked on 2012-DA14 [1] the asteroid that was supposed to cross between the
earth and geosync orbit this evening? One conjecture would be it knocked
something out of orbit.

The air defense stuff is somewhat hard to believe, we don't intercept de-
orbiting space junk, much less less hypersonic meteors. Further every missile
interceptor that is publicly disclosed (which includes the US attempts at an
exo-atmospheric interceptor) have boost stages that generate a lot of vapor,
there is no rising vapor trail in any of the videos of a ground based
interceptor.

Finally there is the magnitude of the flash. Given the lack of sparkles on the
video I don't believe what ever exploded was nuclear but on the videos with
timers watching the flash and timing the 'boom' correlates with the 20 - 25 km
(80,000') in altitude. One hopes it wasn't a surveillance aircraft that was
destroyed. I'm sure if it was we'll hear about that in the morning.

Definitely a mystery.

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-
universe/2013/f...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-
universe/2013/feb/15/asteroid-2012-da14)

~~~
marshray
This guy <https://twitter.com/BadAstronomer/status/302313851511271426> seems
pretty sure it's unrelated to 2012DA14. And he has 230K followers on Twitter,
so ... _shrug_

~~~
carlisle_
I think it's a really bad idea to start using Twitter followers as a
credential. That being said Phil Plait is a legit astronomer and has a Ph.D in
Astronomy and worked on the Hubble Telescope and has done a TED talk on
defending Earth from asteroids. With real credentials like those you're doing
a disservice to first mention the number of Twitter followers to validate his
expertise.

~~~
publicfig
I'm pretty sure mentioning the amount of twitter followers he has as
credentials was a joke, but I agree with your point. I don't think anyone
would contend the fact that Ashton Kutcher had the final say in all matters.

~~~
marshray
For the record, my _shrug_ was meant to acknowledge that Twitter follwers was
an absurd way to judge the credibility of an astronomer.

But he also has a blog on Slate.

------
gph
>According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air
defense unit

Anyone else catch this? Is this just a bad translation and they mean to say
that an air defense unit tracked the meteorite on radar?

I wouldn't think any air defense system would be capable of actually
intercepting a meteorite, but perhaps I'm wrong. Still doesn't seem like
anything intercepted it from the videos.

~~~
eksith
A meteorite would be hypersonic when first entering the atomsphere and then
supersonic the rest of the way until maybe a few hundred meters before impact.
Besides that, if it's not a solid iron-nickle meteorite, it may even breakup
or explode well above the surface instead of staying intact.

It's not quite like taking out a satellite in low Earth orbit in that there's
plenty of information on its orbit, trajectory, tumbling characteristics,
approximate mass etc... It would be very, very, very hard to intercept a
meteorite without a lot of information before it even got close to Earth.

The report of a missile salvo taking it out is very suspect IMO. Without more
information, it's hard to tell.

~~~
jandrewrogers
I don't know about "taking it out" per se but an air defense system designed
to hit ballistic missiles in the terminal phase could also hit an inbound
meteorite. It is within the performance envelope of those types of systems.
That said, against a meteorite it won't do much good since it is an inert
mass.

It is plausible that the Russians launched an interceptor just to be safe. If
it is a meteor, it neither hurts nor helps. If it is a man-made structure, it
will do some real damage to it. Either way they can always argue "better safe
than sorry".

~~~
eksith
Russians have scientists working on the meteorite problem, but I doubt the
military would do a hail Mary launch on this. If anything, they would much
rather let it fall intact than risk having it break up and spread damage to a
much larger area. But that still assumes they can respond quickly enough or
had missiles on standby with weapons that can affect a meteorite (not
specifically ballistic reentry capsules, but actual meteorites). There's a
worrying thought.

It may be hot enough for infrared seekers, but it's no jet. Jets are fragile
by comparison so, unless they had purely kinetic weapons... but that's still
speculation at this point. We still don't know what the Russians did or if
they did anything at all.

I doubt they even knew this specific meteor would enter the atmosphere. It's
already hard enough detecting much bigger rocks in Earth-crossing orbits.

~~~
jandrewrogers
It does seem silly to intercept. The computers could ascertain that the
trajectory was unlikely to have originated on Earth in milliseconds.

Modern terminal guidance systems are all imaging based. Or at least the US
ones have been for a couple decades; I imagine the Russians are using
something at least vaguely similar.

Basically, the missiles latch onto the target visually and are capable of
recognizing their target from the details of its appearance (in an air defense
context, not just "an airplane" but "that _specific_ airplane"). It is why,
contra Hollywood, modern terminal guidance systems are nigh impossible to
spoof. The missile knows what the airplane looks like and can read the tail
number off your craft, so as long as it can locate it (even if it temporarily
loses sight), it is likely to hit unless the motor runs out of gas. Heat has
little to do with it, though the imagers often work in broad spectrum
infrared.

Lots of smaller, impacters with kiloton-class impact energies are never
discovered or discovered at the very last minute. This looks like a pretty
small rock in terms of damage done so it could easily have been missed by sky
surveys.

------
lutusp
From the videos, this was almost certainly a metallic meteorite (stony
meteorites rarely survive their flight through the atmosphere). And it's very
likely that part of it got to the ground intact. Get ready for stories about
recovering a lot of meteorite material in the next few days.

The contrails, and the videos, show that the meteorite (or pair of meteorites)
grew very hot, but survived at least in part and probably fell to the surface.
I would love to see the recovery effort.

Notice the long delay between recording the image of the contrail and the
sonic boom. This reveals how high the meteorite's path was at the location of
the recording.

------
knowaveragejoe
Maybe this will help people appreciate that space is not some other world on
TV, instead _we are in space right now_. Yes, it can reach out and touch us.

~~~
gph
Just to be pedantic for the hell of it, we're really in space-time, and it's
that "time" dimension that makes "space" capable of reaching out and touching
us :D

~~~
ithkuil
That's not being pedantic. That's mixing up "space" as in "the region of space
above the heaven, for most part consisting of vast emptiness and occasional
celestial bodies" and "space" as the "A continuous area or expanse that is
free, available, or unoccupied" and of course it's technical usage in physics.
And this is being pedantic for the hell of it :-)

------
tectonic
FYI, if you see photos of a burning crater, those are fake. That's the Door to
Hell, in Turkmenistan. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_Hell>

~~~
n3rdy
Well that's a relief.

A door to hell is a lot less scary than a meteor crater.

------
joshuahedlund
Is it really just a coincidence that this happened the same day as the
2012DA14 asteroid? Some news articles are saying this came from the other
direction and that these kinds of smaller asteroids hit 5-10 times a year, and
while I put a low trust in my memory I don't recall seeing this stuff all over
the news (and at the top of HN!) every couple of months... Or is that true but
normally they land in the ocean or unpopulated areas and this one just
_happened_ to hit an area with lots of dashboard cams and just _happened_ to
occur on the same day as the 2012DA14 flyby? I'm sure less probabilistic
things have happened in the history of the universe, but I'm still very
curious. Or is it soon to do much but speculate?

~~~
gnur
Yeah, it is a coincidence. It was debunked pretty early on, mainley because
the direction it is flying in exactly the opposite direction the 2012DA14 will
be flying in.

~~~
mitchty
Also the only reason its getting press is the video most likely. That really
helps at getting the reptile brain attention of viewers.

------
thresh
It's amusing how fast the shadows are in those videos:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qin41lP9r2U>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgBZMsaEN6s>

------
anigbrowl
_It is believed that the incident may be connected to asteroid 2012 DA14,
which measures 45 to 95 meters in diameter and will be passing by Earth
tonight at around 19:25 GMT at the record close range of 27,000 kilometers._

apparently there was a risk that asteroid would intercept a satellite orbit.
Too early to say, but it seems more likely than mere coincidence.

~~~
rquantz
Phil Plait (Slate's Bad Astronomer) doesn't think they're related:
<https://twitter.com/BadAstronomer>

Note especially: _12 hours is a long way at 8 km/sec, so this object in
Ruissia was on a very different orbit than 2012 DA14._

and also: _Also, apparently moving east-to-west tho I can’t say for sure.
Anything on the orbit of DA14 would be moving south-to-north._

Obviously info is still pretty thin, and this article seems pretty
speculative. I'd wait a few hours before jumping to any conclusions.

~~~
anigbrowl
Good catch, thanks for the additional data. Could be I'm too eager to see a
pattern where none exists.

------
tectonic
The explosion is clearly audible 25 seconds in to this clip:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA>

~~~
harshreality
Great video except for the Vertical Video Syndrome [1]. Is that glass breaking
right after the shockwave? I wonder what kind of overpressure it generated.

eta: ghshephard posted a link to a better video with the clear sound of glass
breaking. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5224858>

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA>

~~~
empraptor
Maybe the sound that we heard traveled faster than the acoustic waves that
broke the glass due to having different frequencies.

~~~
lutusp
> Maybe the sound that we heard traveled faster than the acoustic waves that
> broke the glass due to having different frequencies.

Unlikely. A powerful sonic boom could cause all that damage, and collapse an
aging brick structure, and yet travel at or near the speed of sound.

------
WestCoastJustin
I suspect the meteorite and earthquake are not related. The only recent
earthquake that fits your description was M6.6 at 67.580°N 142.593°E [1],
that's about ~2630 miles away from the reported meteorite impact in
Chelyabinsk, Russia [2].

[1]
[http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000f76f#...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000f76f#summary)

[2]
[http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_METEORITE?S...](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_METEORITE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT)

~~~
lutusp
> I suspect the meteorite and earthquake are not related.

It wasn't an earthquake -- it was a very powerful sonic boom, and yes, it was
caused by the meteorite's passing. A similar sonic boom flattened hundreds of
square miles in Tunguska in 1908, after a much larger space object fell there:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event>

~~~
WestCoastJustin
The title was changed. The original said there was a meteorite strike,
followed by a 6.7 earthquake.

------
ANH
This site has an image of a hole in the ice of Lake Chebarkul:
<http://say26.com/meteorite-in-russia-all-videos-in-one-place>

Here's the lake:
[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=lake+chebarkul&hl=en&...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=lake+chebarkul&hl=en&sll=54.879767,60.523682&sspn=2.101643,3.232727&t=h&gl=us&hnear=Chebarkul+Lake&z=12)

~40 miles due west of Chelyabinsk and a little south.

------
justin_vanw
Wow, do you know how lucky we all are? Silly little shit like this could
easily start WW3.

We need complete ICBM disarmament. They can keep their bombs and we can keep
ours (for now), but we should restrict delivery systems such that there is a
built in lag (bombers taking many minutes or hours to reach their targets),
and can be recalled. ICBM's can be launched in a moment, and it is impossible
to recall them or disable them once they are underway.

~~~
Jach
No sane military would introduce such a lag. Furthermore I think your concerns
are overblown. After all, something far more "potentially disastrous" happened
in 1983 at a high point in Soviet/US tensions, and fortunately the guy in
charge of retaliation launching had the common sense to reason a war wouldn't
be started with one (or in his case, 5) missiles.
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/jq/926_is_petrov_day/>

~~~
twoodfin
Another problem with a "long fuse" approach: It offers either antagonist a
(seemingly) low-cost path of escalation (say, "just" deploying the ICBMs to
their silos) during a crisis. This not only necessitates a comparable
response, it is subject to being interpreted as more belligerent than
intended. After you've gone a few rounds of this, you're right back where we
are now, launch keys always ready to turn, except this time you're riding the
momentum of mounting brinksmanship.

------
rodolphoarruda
When you look at a commercial jet flying at 10k meters from the ground, it
takes a long while until it disappears from the skyline. This meteorite
crossed the entire skyline in a matter of seconds. That's just mind bogging.
Also, the sound blast arrived waaay after the main explosion, and since it's
been traveling at ~360 meters per second. I wonder if anyone here could
estimate the speed of that rock in the atmosphere.

------
mmastrac
If this isn't some hoax, this is pretty wild. I'm not sure, but the general
volume of news about this seems to point to it being real.

There's more information on this page here:
[http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2013/02/14/what-
is-...](http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2013/02/14/what-is-happening-
in-chelyabinsk/)

------
jessaustin
Nowhere on the linked page is there any reference to a 6.9 quake. There wasn't
an earthquake of any kind, although, "Witnesses said the explosion was so loud
that it resembled an earthquake and thunder at the same time..."

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to believe anyway. Wasn't the rule that RT is
considered accurate on any stories _not_ involving Russia?

~~~
apaprocki
Yeah, 6.9 is not mentioned in the story and USGS does not show any recorded
event there. Russian media was saying nothing hit the ground -- there was just
an explosion in air which is seen in the video. I'm sure _something_ hit the
ground, though.

------
grinnick
I can't get over how long it takes for the sonic boom to hit. This video has
the meteorite trail on camera for 27 seconds before you hear the boom:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA>

How fast does something have to be travelling to build up a delay like that?

~~~
knowaveragejoe
While it's moving at great speed, it's really about distance that determines
the gap with sonic booms. Speed of sound is ~340m/s at sea level, so using
that value with a gap of 27 seconds we can assume the boom originated ~9.1km
away from the camera(thus it took 27 seconds for the sound to reach the
camera). The distance is probably wrong given the speed of sound is different
depending on the altitude.

The speed had more to do with the magnitude of the boom itself.

~~~
jlgreco
And to be clear, there isn't any one "boom" event with a sonic boom. It is an
ongoing event for stationary observers, a pressure front that follows the
object and is heard when it passes by you.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Very true. That effect is very pronounced with this one in particular. Would
have been truly awesome to experience in person, if not for the possible
hearing loss.

------
rdl
I don't get why everyone seems to be running _out_ of (what appear to be)
fairly sturdy concrete buildings and into the street. Sure, a building won't
protect you from an incoming meteorite of any size, but being indoors might
protect from fragments if an incoming meteor hits something else.

~~~
zokier
Why not run outside? I haven't heard anyone killed by meteorites, so I
wouldn't consider them very threatening. If it's not threatening then why not
go out and enjoy the show?

~~~
lutusp
> I haven't heard anyone killed by meteorites, so I wouldn't consider them
> very threatening.

Just for the historical record, an Egyptian dog was allegedly killed by a
meteorite:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite>

Quote: "The most infamous reported fatality from a meteorite impact is that of
an Egyptian dog that was killed in 1911, although this report is highly
disputed."

Another quote: "The first known modern case of a human hit by a space rock
occurred on 30 November 1954 in Sylacauga, Alabama.[41] There a 4 kilograms
(8.8 lb) stone chondrite[42] crashed through a roof and hit Ann Hodges in her
living room after it bounced off her radio. She was badly bruised."

She was also extremely fat, and the meteorite grazed her ample side. I'll bet
it motivated a soul-searching consideration of a weight-loss program:

[http://blogs.funeralwise.com/dying/files/2012/05/Anne-
Hodges...](http://blogs.funeralwise.com/dying/files/2012/05/Anne-Hodges.jpg)

------
ghshephard
Excellent video of some crowd reactions -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7mLUIDGqmw>

Has someone running, after the boom, comes across crowds being directed out of
buildings. You can almost sense that they really have no idea what's going on.

------
lifeisstillgood
Side issue: Anyone know what a Google Driverless car would make of a fireball
heading towards it out of the sky? Is there a default action in case of
uncertainty? Brake? Swerve? Any of those by these drivers could have been
worse than the "yebat"

~~~
SteveC
This would be a case where the driver would be expected to take over.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Car Voice: Yebat! There's a freaking asteroid heading down the road. On the
wrong side! Bloody Thrun never had a test case for this. Sod it. You drive
....

:-)

Thank you, I needed a good laugh

Edit: I have real work I should be doing: <http://i.imgur.com/usRX31z.jpg>

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Having now caught up on the actual damage done (500 injured, thousands without
windows in a Russian winter) I regret this light-hearted take - please
consider it deleted until I can find some way to actually delete it.

------
barrynolan
I was wondering why there are so many dashboard cams. Answer: from the NYTimes

"Some of the numerous videos that quickly emerged of the incident highlighted
a distinctly Russian phenomenon: the dashboard cam. As Business Insider
recently pointed out, they are commonplace in Russia partly because of the
dangerous driving conditions that lead to so many accidents, and with an
unreliable police force such cameras can provide valuable evidence following a
crash."

[http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/video-
captures-f...](http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/video-captures-
flaming-object-believed-to-be-meteorite/?smid=tw-share)

------
instakill
It's amazing how something so tiny can illuminate the entire sky like that.

~~~
tectonic
I'm not convinced it was tiny.

------
DanBC
Did NASA have this on their list of objects they were tracking, and did they
see it going down as it did? (I'm not suggesting that they should have been
able to predict it.)

It's amazing that we have so much coverage of this.

I really hope someone somewhere is making a life size mockup of this object,
and then showing on a map what damage would be done by bigger objects.

"This is what something the size of a car would do"

"This is what something the size of a house would do"

"This is the average size of the biggest 5% of the objects that we track in
Earth orbit, and here's the damage that'd do".

(A bit like that atomic bomb map).

------
zokier
With all these videos, I wonder if Photosynth-style 3D reconstruction of the
scene would be possible. That would be very interesting to look at.

------
nitrogen
A couple of years ago a smaller meteor blazed over the western United States,
lighting up large parts of Utah
([http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=8714738](http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=8714738)),
but lacking the sonic boom. I did see the Utah meteor directly, and I imagine
that today's was significantly more awesome and more terrifying.

------
dmor
We are compiling coverage, videos, etc. in a single place on Referly
(obviously there are NO product links) - including many links found here.
Would appreciate any contributions, suggestions, translations and feedback:

[http://refer.ly/meteor-over-
russia/c/15aeda3c773d11e2bfbf220...](http://refer.ly/meteor-over-
russia/c/15aeda3c773d11e2bfbf22000a1db8fa)

~~~
rdl
I wish you would put a B612 Foundation link on there (which is sort of a
product link, I guess)

------
brokentone
I can't help but notice this is only a few positions above the large hadron
collider shutting down story. Correlation?

~~~
dredmorbius
Correlation is high. Causation is low.

------
maqr
Do meteorites really do this? I've never heard of another like this event
before, and I always hear reports about meteors 'almost' hitting earth well in
advance of the possible collision date.

I didn't think the sky could simply open up and rain down hellfire without
anybody spotting it beforehand.

~~~
lutusp
> Do meteorites really do this? I've never heard of another like this event
> before ...

In that case, it's time for you to read about Tunguska in 1908:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event>

~~~
tokipin
that thing was no joke

------
soci
Yet another compilation of all the videos here:
<http://www.comandotibidabo.com/meteoritos-urales/>

I've been amazed by how huge the explosion is being so far away from the
meteorite crash.

------
anigbrowl
Yikes, >500 people injured: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-
russia-meteorit...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-russia-
meteorite-idUSBRE91E05Z20130215)

:-(

------
peacewise
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking_huge_meteor_explodes_over_russia.html)

~~~
peacewise
"Preliminary indications are that it was a meteorite rain," an emergency
official told RIA-Novosti. "We have information about a blast at 10,000-meter
(32,800-foot) altitude. It is being verified."
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-russia-
meteorit...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-russia-meteorite-
idUSBRE91E05Z20130215)

------
interconnector
Nature article: [http://www.nature.com/news/russian-meteor-largest-in-a-
centu...](http://www.nature.com/news/russian-meteor-largest-in-a-
century-1.12438)

------
volna80
compilation of different videos

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5BuXRYuPP3M)

------
alinspired
They are confused on what's going on and cursing badly :)

------
late2part
And the second stage of HAARP testing concluded.....

------
strobe
place where meteor crashed is only 100 miles from me but I got to know about
it today from web-news :)

------
rowanseymour
Half life 3 viral video campaign... ?

------
MayankJain
Insane!

------
homakov
that's how we roll

------
sumeetchawla
OMG... That is scary!

------
spitx

      8:10 GMT: Oleg Malkov, an aerospace scientist at 
      Moscow State University, told Komsomolskaya Pravda
      newspaper   that the meteorite went undetected by 
      space scanners,   likely because it was coming from
      the direction of the Sun.
      "We can only register stones coming from the 
      direction of the night sky," he explained. Malkov
      confirmed that   the meteor shower in the Urals 
      was not connected to the 2012DA14 asteroid that 
      will approach Earth in a few hours.
    
      7:46 GMT: Ekaterinburg’s observatory has officially 
      deemed the incident a fireball meteor shower. No 
      evacuations were called for, and radiation levels 
      were determined to be normal.
    
      Source: 
      http://rt.com/news/russia-meteor-meteorite-asteroid
      -chelyabinsk-291/

~~~
lampooned
That is terrifiying.

------
spitx

      9:36 GMT: There is a high chance that another 
      meteorite could enter the Earth’s atmosphere in 
      the next few hours, Sergey Smirnov from Pulkovo 
      Observatory told Vesti news channel.
      
      9:07 GMT: "The object could be about a meter
      in diameter and weigh a few tons,” Valeriy Shuvalov
      of the Institute of Geosphere Dynamics told 
      RIA-Novosti. 
      “As it entered the atmosphere, it broke into a 
      cloud of pieces that flew on, creating a blast wave 
      and emitting light. That's where the flashes came 
      from, as well as broken windows. Most of the 
      object’s material evaporated, the remaining pieces
      slowed down and fell. It was most likely of iron 
      nature as it penetrated so far through the 
      atmosphere. 
      However, we still don't have the exact data on 
      the debris."
    

Source: [http://rt.com/news/russia-meteor-meteorite-asteroid-
chelyabi...](http://rt.com/news/russia-meteor-meteorite-asteroid-
chelyabinsk-291/)

~~~
tripzilch
> a high chance that another meteorite could enter the Earth’s atmosphere in
> the next few hours

can you get another source than RT? they seem to aim for senation first,
accuracy second

------
spitx
Image updates as of 3:30 AM ET

    
    
      http://goo.gl/V7491
      http://goo.gl/4Rqk0
      http://goo.gl/WHR65
      http://goo.gl/PUH6q
      http://goo.gl/qlXE3
      http://goo.gl/LRD52

------
thresh
Too bad this meteorite didnt crash in Sochi. Could've helped covering the
Olympics constructions thefts.

------
irollboozers
So, uh, NASA was expecting this. They were going to have a livestream chat
about this? Er, looks like they got the prediction slightly off.

[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid201...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130201315144.html)

*For the person who downvoted me, there is supposed to be a near earth flyby tomorrow of an asteroid called 2012 DA14 which will be livestreamed with commentary by NASA here: <http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2>. A reasonable explanation would be that the event today was a chuck or asteroid as part of that expected fly by. The astroid is expected to be 17,000 miles away from Earth.

