The official line seems to be that this event is unrelated to the close call Earth is going to have at 2:24p today (eastern time).

After what happened in Russia today, many more people will be watching the sky when the bigger one zooms [hopefully] by....

Was already planning on going to Costco this morning. Perhaps I should stock up on ramen noodles? Or liquor.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...le-injured.html



Moment meteorite exploded in the sky above Russian town as doctors treat 950 people injured when sonic boom shattered windows


"The event has been well-documented - many drivers in Russia have video recorders fitted in their cars to record any accident or disputes.

"Within an hour of the explosion, footage from these was uploaded to YouTube showing the fireball crashing to the ground."



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"ramen noodles"?? If this is the coming apocalypse, I am going to go out gorging on ice cream and pumpkin pie, with lots of chocolate on the side. No need to worry about weight gain....

Dang, darn, errrr... Wow.

Sounds like a repeat of the Tunguska Event.

There are some unconfirmed and/or denied reports that a Russian Air Defense unit picked up the meteor, fired its missles and hit the target (causing it to break up). Here is one report:

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/22720/53/

So the mayans were a month or so off????

Wonder what speed it came in at,that would be a fine missile intercept to pull it off.

The Russians are denying they have that capability.

I would be denying I had that capability if I had it too.

Good trick if you can pull it off.

Especially if you pulled it off, only to find out that you transformed it into a "shotgun" impact, thereby spreading out the damage. . .

I'd bet on friction heating from the denser air near the ground, but PVO Strany might have been ready...only NSA knows for sure, and they're not talking

Yikes. Time to upgrade from hardhats to Kevlars.

WHERE is Bruce Willis when you really NEED him????

Hint: Probably standing on an oil rig in the Gulf hitting golf balls at Greenpeace.

HAHAHA!!!
Pete2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=gQ6Pa5Pv_io#!

shock wave arrival time was 2 minute 40 seconds. So these observations would typically be over 30 miles away. Reported Infrasound measurements have been reporting energy yields greater than 100Kt i.e. greater than a battlefield tactical nuclear weapon detonation at altitudes approaching 100,000 feet or higher.

If the 2012 DA14 were to hit the earth later today the explosion would be similar or even greater than the Tunguska event.

Lots of interesting information at and through this link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capi...d7adb_blog.html

"...meteors this big enter Earth’s atmosphere about every 5 years, but that the impact of this particular meteor on humans is “unprecedented” in modern times. A news article in the journal Nature says it’s the biggest recorded object to hit Earth in a century.

"Both because most of the Earth’s land area is not densely populated and oceans cover such a large area, most inbound space material is not observed and eludes human impact."


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These to events happening today is an incredible coincidence.

Went to Costco today. Ready for armageddon.

Costco was already on the to-do list because I'm making chili for a weekend gathering.

Just in case TEOTWAWKI is imminent, I also grabbed some red velvet cupcakes.




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10 ton rock going 33000mph (10 miles per second). How in the world would you intercept something that large going that fast?

Hopefully they find it intact at the bottom of that lake. The sonic booms are on youtube, incredible.

I was watching some TV footage from RT and there are concrete buildings where windows--not just the glass, but the whole window frame--are just caved in from the blast. Not sure if it's from the sonic boom or from a blast wave after it impacted. Impressive.

I'm still waiting for an alien craft to rise up from that 8m hole.

Is it time to get serious about Spaceguard?

The impactor is definitely unrelated to the fly-by - they came from completely different directions. It's an amazing coincidence.

40 years ago there was real concern that something like this kind of event might start WW3.


It was moving *far* too fast for any missile interceptor. Nobody has anything that can survive the aerodynamic pressure of moving through the atmosphere that fast in any kind of controlled flight. Maybe Apollo 13's re-entry came closest.

Here is a nice multimedia summary by RIA Novosti, video, pictures and map, and brief summary of what happened:

http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20130215/179495177/Meteorite-Fragments-Hit-Russia.html

Note, at least on my connection, it takes a bit to load.

My surprise is the distance between the various impact points, at least one of which seems to be 90 degrees from the flight path.

I saw a number of videos showing the impacts. Apparently dash cams are installed in a lot of cars in Russia so there is a lot of video available.

A lot of the drivers never even slowed down when these things came down. You could hear the radio in the cars sometimes and the drivers seemed to act like this was an everyday occurrence. Didn't pull over, one guy said something in Russian but that was it.

Isn´t Cheljabinsk somesort of center for Russian space programs? In that case they might be used to see rocket launches.

After doing some googling it´s clear that Cheljabinsk is a center for nuclear research.

They wish they were that good.

Dash cams are a requirement for obtaining automobile insurance there.

"Dash cams are a requirement for obtaining automobile insurance there."

Maybe this allows them to identify the guy with the vodka bottle who stepped in front of your car. Hahahaha!

Pete2

Yeah, shooting down a rock going 30,000 mph seems like a bit of a stretch.

LOL, you're right, Izzy. Actually, Putin was probably riding the darn thing, a la Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove.


Many experts doubted we could ever shoot down slower ICBM's as proposed in the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars" program) without a huge leap in technology that never happened. And there's evidence that our Patriot missles rarely intercepted much slower Scud missles during the first Gulf War, in spite of all the video on CNN supposedly showing successful intercepts.

Actually, considering the dire warnings about how US and Russian strategic nuclear forces are still on hair trigger alert and how the smallest false alarms could start WW III, I guess we should be grateful that we're all still here. Or--maybe the Russian's capabilities have degraded, due to lack of funds, to the point that they weren't aware of the meteor until it was too late.

There is even photo proof of that.

It's almost happened, more than once. Here is a recent news story about a Soviet Officer who chose not to report what appeared to (their equipement) to be incoming missiles---if he had reported it, they would have almost certainly launched.

http://www.mfs-theothernews.com/2013/02/retired-soviet-officer-awarded-prize.html

It's not the only time a single person stopped WW3. Another Soviet officer did it during the Cuban Missile Crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov

For many years I've also heard rumors of a USAF officer who also stopped us from launching when we thought we had detected incoming missiles, only to later discover it was equipment error---Venus or something. I've never been able to find any documentation or reports for this---mayby one of you guys know more.

These incidents prove to me that we always need a person in the loop, and be grateful for that.

If you really want to worry (or wonder about our good luck) here is a link to "20 mishaps that could have started an accidential nuclear war"

http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/...nuclear-war.htm

None that I mentioned are on the list.

You're Putin me on!

Lets not kid ourselves.Russia still has nuclear subs out there with 200 warheads.3 of those could really ruin our day.Or 1 for that matter.

Last I heard they were having trouble keeping even one sub at sea on an ongoing basis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMygG4F0hk8

There does appear to be some indication of what could be an ABM striking the meteor at 12-13 seconds into this video.

Also that there appears to be two distinct meteor trails indicates the possibility that the meteor did indeed break into two parts.

I wouldn't rule out the possibility that an ABM system was used.

There was also a large one near the San Francisco area Friday night, and possibly another over Cuba. I haven't seen any footage of the Cuban one, so it might be pravada rather than fact, but the one over SF there is plenty of footage of.

Makes me wonder how many others of significant size hit over the oceans and weren't seen.

A meteor often breaks up; it has nothing to do with being struck by a missile and everything to do with the stresses of hitting the atmo at Mach 40!

For me this event represents a profound personal loss. For years, I have always stated "You are more likely to be hit by a meteor from outer space than......" Now that about 1000 people have been dinged by one (albeit indirectly by shattered glass), I must come up with a new expression...Oh,the agony!

There are a lot of great video's of this event. I guess the one take away I passed along to me son on this one was "If you see something that looks like this... don't be standing behind window when the shock wave hits. You might want to cover your ears as well..."

That was while I was showing him the video of the guy who was standing out in front of a 12 story building covered with windows when the the shock wave hit.

seems to me from watching the videos that it really points out the poor building quality / codes in place there contributing to the high injurys from flying glass etc. most of that stuff looked like single pane non safety glass that just broke into flying shards combined with very old unstable brick style buildings. just my 2 cents.

I can't think of many places in N. America where safety glass is the norm in buildings. How many commercial buildings use safety glass? I don't know. But certainly there's little or no safety glass in residential areas aside from cars. Modern glass is arguably tougher, but if the meteor had hit over a populated N. American city there would have been a fair amount of damage and injuries also.

The "shards of glass" problem puts me in mind of the Halifax explosion in 1917. Outside the half-mile radius of total destruction, buildings in a 16 mile radius were destroyed or badly damaged. And then the fires took hold. An enormous amount of injuries were from shattered glass. True to human nature, people went to the window to look at the munition ships on fire in the harbour. It was, arguably, the largest man-made explosion of the pre-nuclear era.

Glass is a major problem in high-rise urban areas during hurricanes. Downtown Houston has been a very dangerous place in every hurricane there.

The problem isn't just retention of the glass but also eliminating debris. Gravel-covered roofs used to be popular until it was realized that a supply of pebbles 60 floors up atop a building meant neighboring buildings would be sand-blasted on the 45th floor, resulting in large pieces of glass falling 450+ feet to the streets below. Oops.

Wow. Not good.

It occurs to me that you're probably talking about tempered glass (not safety glass, which I think of as laminated windshield glass). Tempered glass will certainly take a lot more abuse before it breaks. I have a sunroom on my house, really just a wall of glass with aluminum channelling, and it's made of tempered glass for safety reasons. But I don't know how many building codes really call for it; it's probably only required for specific applications.

that is correct. my bad on the terms used. I just have never seen a tempured glass window shatter in shards like those did. I'm sure the injury rate would be much higher from shards like that seen in the photos.