What caused the massive explosions in Russia?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andre
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Crash Meteorite
AI Thread Summary
A massive meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injured over 950 people and caused extensive damage to buildings, primarily from shattered glass. The explosion occurred approximately 5 km above the ground, with reports indicating it may have been a meteor shower coinciding with the close passage of asteroid 2012 DA14. Initial estimates suggest the meteor was about 15 meters in diameter and released energy equivalent to 300 kilotons of TNT. NASA confirmed that the Russian meteor's trajectory was unrelated to the asteroid, dismissing any connection. The event has raised concerns about planetary defense systems due to the unexpected nature of such impacts.
Physics news on Phys.org
Looks like it blew up right before hitting the ground, might be a lot of small pieces.
 
I have seen at least two videos with a loud shock wave - and it is apparent people were shooting the video for many seconds before the bang. It exploded high above the ground, probably over 10 km.
 
Its obviously a secret military experiment ;) Or aliens! Definately aliens!
 
Wow, unreal. It isn't clear to me from what I've read/seen so far if it was a sonic boom or explosion that caused all of the damage.

[edit] Reading the wiki on the Tunguska event, it says that "Fat Man" nuclear bomb sized explosions (10-20 KT) happen in the upper atmosphere about once a year (!). Tunguska-sized events (10-20MT) perhaps once every 300 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
 
Last edited:
Meteorite explosion over Russia: Chelyabinsk Meteor shower

Meteorite explosion over Russia: Chelyabinsk Meteor shower










http://file25.content-video.ru/Out/WebM/20130215/2013_02_15_RIAMETEORNAREZKAmix_x4pl0pgu.4r5.webm


As you probably are aware, today, should pass near Earth an asteroid, 2012 DA14, at a very close range, nearly 25-27 thousand km above Earth. This morning in Chelyabinsk (Russia) was registered a meteor shower, as a result 500 people were injured and thousands of buildings got windows broken.

Is it an interesting coincidence or it's the shower before the storm.. ?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I can't watch the video from work but, I'm looking forward to it later today. From what I've read, a lot of people were injured by flying glass. Note to self: Stay away from the windows if you see a really bright meteor.
 
"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.
 


I don't think its coincidence, suppose the asteroid was at one time a larger mass and collided with another asteroid causing many smaller fragments to travel along the same trajectory. I'd expect more meteors during and after the event too.
 
  • #10


I believe we'll get more info from NASA reports in a few days, as I am sure there were other "pieces" fallen in the oceans.
 
  • #11
Borek said:
"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.
Wow. 5 km is well within a jetliner's cruising altitude. I wonder if any were in the area? I'm guessing there weren't since there haven't been any reports of crashes or decompressions from broken windows.
 
  • #12
Borek said:
"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.

Yeah, I didn't think of that. It may well be a hoax via viral videos could be like the Toyota commercial of a truck survivng a meteor strike.

EDIT: Looking at the videos, it seems authentic although I noticed each video show it streaking from left to right meaning all the camera people were on one side of the meteor track.
 
Last edited:
  • #14
More damage reports: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...xploded-doctors-treat-500-people-injured.html


A terrifying meteorite shower left more than 950 people injured, buildings devastated and the mobile network wiped out when it hit Russia this morning.

Brightly burning rocks could be seen for miles as they crashed at around 9.20am local time and one bystander described it 'like a scene from the Armageddon movie.'

The meteorite is believed to have landed in a lake near Chebarkul, a town in the neighbouring Chelyabinsk region.
 
  • #15
jedishrfu said:
I don't think its coincidence, suppose the asteroid was at one time a larger mass and collided with another asteroid causing many smaller fragments to travel along the same trajectory. I'd expect more meteors during and after the event too.
Greg Bernhardt said:
Hundreds reportedly injured!
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/15/world/europe/russia-meteor-shower/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
NASA is stating that the tracks are completely different.
NASA spokesman Steve Cole told CNN that scientists had determined that the Russian meteor was on a very different trajectory from the asteroid.
"They are completely unrelated objects -- it's a strange coincidence they are happening at the same time," he said.
 
  • #16
On a related note, a colleague here noticed that the video times are different. Some I'm wondering if some old videos have also been mixed in with the latest actual video.
 
  • #17
jedishrfu said:
On a related note, a colleague here noticed that the video times are different. Some I'm wondering if some old videos have also been mixed in with the latest actual video.

That actually makes them more likely to be authentic. :smile:
 
Last edited:
  • #18
Borek said:
"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.

The cameras in the cars are on by default, no need to switch them on. (its related to car insurance that they carry always cameras)

We´ll have to wait for more detailed reports, but i´ve seen images of a building that received hits (a factory).
Actually more than 1 thousand reported injuries
 
  • #19
Has anyone heard from Evo yet?
 
  • #21
nsaspook said:
That actually makes them more likely to be authentic. :smile:

The reason I mentioned it was that one feed had a date of last year. The tracks look very similar so they appear authentic.
 
  • #22
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.
 
  • #23
russ_watters said:
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.

Many of the videos are from car dash-cams, everybody in the fussr has them because of the police and psychopath drivers.

http://mashable.com/2013/02/15/why-russians-have-dash-cams-caught-meteor/
 
  • #26
asteroids_are_natures_way_of_asking-110321.jpg
 
  • #27
This video shows the train in high detail with good audio of the sonic boom sequence.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #29
nsaspook said:
This video shows the train in high detail with good audio of the sonic boom sequence.


That was one of the videos I have seen earlier.

Notice the bang comes around 30 sec - while the explosion didn't have to be exactly overhead, it was at least 10 km from the guy with the camera.

My understanding is that most of those injured are not victims of the direct meteorite hit, but of the shattered glass.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #30
heh, the quote in that asteroid picture reminds me to check Neil Tyson's twitter..
 
  • #31
dydxforsn said:
heh, the quote in that asteroid picture reminds me to check Neil Tyson's twitter..

REDDITORS said the image came from Neil's feed.
 
  • #32
  • #33
Borg said:
NASA is stating that the tracks are completely different.

'A man' on the radio said that one track is North South and the other is East West so just a coincidence. I hope we have no coincidences in the UK.
 
  • #34
I'd like to see more confirmation, but here they've upped the size estimate by near an order of magnitude and the energy estimate by close to two:
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
http://www.space.com/19822-russian-fireball-biggest-explosion-century.html

[edit] and the speed estimate to 40,000 mph (18km/s).
 
  • #35
So, I've gathered from this that we never saw this coming. I wonder if this is going to add impetus to develop a planetary defense system against this sort of thing...
 
  • #36
I can see several reasons why a planetary defense system would not be feasible against meteors.

I came across the website of the American Meteor Society and noticed that the number of reports of 'fireballs' increased from zero in 2004 - 2006 to 2219 in 2012..

Here is the full result

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/meteor-rep.jpg

Now which of the following is true?:

A. it's unreliable/fake;
B. armageddon 12-21-12-hype;
C. it merely reflects the profileration of the site;
D. Earth is actually entering a dirty piece of the cosmos
E. a bit of all of the above?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #37
I read this over a week ago.

At the current rate that near-Earth asteroids are being detected, it will take astronomers 15 years to identify every one of significant size

Scientists have estimated that 20,000 asteroids lurk in the solar system, of which only 6,000 have been identified, Beeson said.

Beeson and her colleagues looked at the historical rate of asteroid discovery and found that, at the current pace, it will take about 15 years to identify all the asteroids in the solar system that are wider than 100 meters (328 feet).

Most of the missing asteroids are traveling by during the daytime or traveling through a patch of the sky not watched by existing surveys, she found.

To speed discovery, the team should expand the patch of sky observed by two programs, the Mount Lemmon and Catalina sky surveys, she said. To find asteroids that are crossing by Earth only during the day, scientists should prioritize the B612 Sentinel mission, which aims to send a telescope into a Venus-like orbit around the sun, Beeson added.

http://news.yahoo.com/search-near-earth-asteroids-needs-speed-boost-114855823.html?_sr=1
 
  • #38
aquitaine said:
So, I've gathered from this that we never saw this coming. I wonder if this is going to add impetus to develop a planetary defense system against this sort of thing...

You have to ask yourself just how much of their income people would be prepared to spend on this. The money wouldn't just turn up by magic. 10% Asteroid tax??
 
  • #40
This is crazy... same day the asteroid passes by too. However I fail to understand how any sort of rock barely half the size of a football field could possibly do any major, apocalyptic-scale harm to earth. What if it just landed in the ocean or something?
 
  • #41
Color_of_Cyan said:
This is crazy... same day the asteroid passes by too.


However I fail to understand how any sort of rock barely half the size of a football field could possibly do any major, apocalyptic-scale harm to earth. What if it just landed in the ocean or something?

Kinetic energy is 1/2 mv^2

The velocity of objects in space tend to be very high - with the relative velocity even higher if the two objects are traveling towards each other.

With a speed of 18km/sec, the kinetic energy of a train locomotive would be equivalent to a kiloton of TNT.
 
  • #42
To expand: 11 km/s is the minimum possible speed of an approaching meteor because that's escape velocity. Most objects in the solar system orbit in the same direction, but if one is on an opposite course or is a sun-diving comet, it could be as high as 72 km/sec. http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
 
  • #43
russ_watters said:
To expand: 11 km/s is the minimum possible speed of an approaching meteor because that's escape velocity.
Wouldn't that make it the minimum speed of an escaping meteor?
 
  • #44
Jimmy Snyder said:
Wouldn't that make it the minimum speed of an escaping meteor?
Or of a meter that almost escaped, then fell back down.
 
  • #45
But if I merely toss an object up, it comes back down without ever going 11 km/s
 
  • #46
Jimmy Snyder said:
But if I merely toss an object up, it comes back down without ever going 11 km/s
Keep lifting those weights and you'll get there eventually.
 
  • #47
Actually, 11 km/s is the maximum speed of a meteor that almost escaped, then fell back down.
 
  • #48
russ_watters said:
To expand: 11 km/s is the minimum possible speed of an approaching meteor because that's escape velocity.

Jimmy Snyder said:
Wouldn't that make it the minimum speed of an escaping meteor?

True.

However, for the speed to be less than 11 km/sec for a close approaching object, something had to change the speed of the object very recently or it would already be orbiting the Earth instead of just having a trajectory that intersects the Earth's orbit.

Both the Earth and the asteroid/comet/etc have to have the same specific potential energy per unit of mass (relative to the Sun) since they're intersecting. For the relative velocity to be small, both the Earth and the asteroid have to have a total specific energy per unit of mass that's almost equal. That means the orbit of both has to be close to the same size, meaning the two should come near each other repeatedly over eons of time.

Since you're talking relative velocity (the Earth is traveling around the Sun at nearly 30 km/sec), I guess you could conceivably come up with some other trajectories that just happen to finally synch up with the Earth's motion for the first time ever. It's just that the probability of those trajectories are going to be incredibly low.

For practical purposes, russ's statement is correct.
 
  • #49
There is no minimum speed for a meteor colliding with the Earth (ignoring air resistance) because the meteor could have been going around the sun in the same orbit as the Earth before the collision. Indeed, it is possible that the Earth was made of such meteors and if so, there was negligible air resistance when it happened.
 
  • #50
Jimmy Snyder said:
There is no minimum speed for a meteor colliding with the Earth (ignoring air resistance) because the meteor could have been going around the sun in the same orbit as the Earth before the collision. Indeed, it is possible that the Earth was made of such meteors and if so, there was negligible air resistance when it happened.

But ... if the meteor is going roughly the same speed as Earth when far away, it will speed way up (relative to us) as it gets closer. Gravitational attraction to Earth will make it speed up. The same escape speed you calculate from conservation of energy principles does give the minimum speed of a meteor strike.
 

Similar threads

What Caused the Bright Flash on the Moon on March 17, 2013?
Replies
4
Views
3K
Current and Future AI Threats to Humanity and the Human Response
Replies
10
Views
4K
The Truth about 911 gutting the disinformation, LETS GET IT ON
3
Replies
109
Views
63K

Hot Threads

Recent Insights

Back
Top