Antinuclear

Slide show of meteor fireball over Russia’s Chelyabinsk region

Slide Show and Videos http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/15/16969092-nuclear-like-in-its-intensity-russia-meteor-blast-is-largest-since-1908?lite  15 Feb 13, Nuclear-like in its intensity, Russia meteor blast is largest since 1908 By Alan Boyle and Matthew DeLuca, NBC News

A meteor 15 meters across flared through the skies over Russia’s Chelyabinsk region early Friday, triggering an atomic bomb-sized shock wave that injured nearly a thousand people, blew out windows and caused some Russians to fear the end of the world.

It was the largest reported fireball since the Tunguska event in 1908 – an asteroid that flattened millions of trees over a wide area in Siberia – according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Multiple amateur videos posted online showed the meteor’s flaring arc – called a bolide by scientists – as it crossed the western Siberia sky. Others from the scene included the sound of a loud boom, followed by a cacophony of car alarms. One video showed the hurried evacuation of an office building in Chelyabinsk……. The fireball’s trail, which JPL reported was visible for about 30 seconds and said was “brighter than the sun,” lit up one man’s morning commute. “I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day,” Viktor Prokofiev told Reuters. “I felt like I was blinded by headlights.”

Estimates of the number of people injured swelled throughout the day, with early reports putting those hurt around 500, with close to 100 people hospitalized. Chelyabinsk health official Marina Moskvicheva later said as many as 985 people had requested medical assistance in the city, many for injuries caused by flying glass. More than 200 children at Chelyabink schools, which had just opened, were among the injured, according to officials.

Russia’s interior ministry said the shock wave caused the roof of a zinc factory’s warehouse to collapse, but that no fatalities were reported.

The fireball entered Earth’s atmosphere at 18 km per second, and released hundreds of kilotons of energy, JPL said. The blast’s force was the equivalent of the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII – many times over…… Watch today’s asteroid near miss online

If something the size of 2012 DA14 were ever to hit Earth, the scenario might play out in a similar way, but with a far more powerful impact. The European Space Agency posted a message on its Twitter account saying that there was no link between the Russian meteor and asteroid 2012 DA14.

“Asteroid 2012 DA14 will not impact Earth, but if another asteroid of a size similar to that of 2012 DA14 (about 150 feet across) were to impact Earth, it would release approximately 2.5 megatons of energy in the atmosphere and would be expected to cause regional devastation,” NASA said in a statement on its website.

February 16, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized