Meteorite crash in Russia

"Experts say the explosion took place 5 km above the ground" - judging from the videos I have a feeling time to reach the surface was much longer than 15 seconds (plus people had to get the cameras and switch them on, which adds at least 10 seconds more). But then I have not tried to measure it.

That actually makes them more likely to be authentic.

I would have thought by now most would have accurate clocks. Cell phones are and police dash cams should be synced to GPS, with millisecond accuracy. Digital security cams are on networks that should sync to an internet time server every week or so and be accurate to a few seconds.

Standalone cameras are still a crap shoot but I wouldn't expect to see many on a quick-draw event.

Phil Plait is collecting videos and information, and seems to have a pretty good summary of what's known so far.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro...er_russia.html

This video shows the train in high detail with good audio of the sonic boom sequence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ozSq3yEm3g

heh, the quote in that asteroid picture reminds me to check Neil Tyson's twitter..

NASA is stating that the tracks are completely different.

The object that caused the Russian fireball, which damaged hundreds of buildings and wounded perhaps 1,000 people in the Chelyabinsk region, was originally probably about 50 feet (15 meters) in diameter and weighed roughly 7,000 tons, said Peter Brown, director of the Center for Planetary Science and Exploration at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

From multiple sensors using multiple technologies, a best initial estimate of the total energy of the event is about 300 kilotons of TNT-equivalent