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A meteorite has just exploded over Russia. This doesn’t feel good when you know that a 150-foot asteroid is about to fly by Earth — and you read about the actual effects of an impact if astronomers’ calculations are wrong. 250 people have been injured, according to the BBC. The videos we are collecting are incredible.
What’s more incredible: unconfirmed reports say that an air defence unit fired a missile as the meteor entered Russian airspace at supersonic speeds, shattering it to pieces. I find this hard to believe, as I doubt their air defence had the time to detect and target an object that appeared out of nowhere, from space. There’s also one single trail. If a missile actually hit anything, there would be multiple trails following the debris.
More likely, the meteor exploded before hitting the ground because of the enormous heat generated by the compression of air in front of the meteor or asteroid. This phenomenon is called asteroid airburst or bolide.
According to witnesses, cellphones stopped working and windows were blown out as the meteor exploded in the air. Apparently, about 250 people have been reported injured so far because of falling glasses and other minor accidents. You can hear windows being obliterated in some of the videos.
The Russian Emergency Ministry says that there are 20,000 rescue workers deployed in the area. Aircraft are now flying over the area looking for impact sites.
The event was observed in the regions of Chelyabinsk, Tyumen and Sverdlovsk, located in the Republic of Bashkiria and in northern Kazakhstan.
Some people are theorising that this is connected to the flyby of the asteroid 2012 DA14, which will pass near Earth later today, saying this is is “rubble” flying along the larger asteroid. While the timing in uncanny, there’s absolutely no scientific demonstration of this theory at this point. It’s purely speculative.
Update: In fact, the European Space Agency say their experts “confirm there is no link between meteor incidents in Russia and Asteroid 2012DA14 flyby today”.
Latest update: The Russian Academy of Sciences has estimated that the meteorite weighed about 10 tonnes and entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 33,000 mph, shattering about 18-32 miles above ground.
Read: What would actually happen if the 150-foot asteroid hit Earth today?
This is amazing. Here you can’t see the meteorite, but look at the scene lighting as the meteorite passes illuminating the sky
Another view of an intersection illuminated by the meteorite’s fire trail
The complete fall from another angle
The meteorite trail
The sound of the meteorite
Another view of the trail. Listen to the explosion at 0:20
The final explosion looks like the beginning of a nuclear detonation
Another spectacular shot
Meteorite taking over some dude on the road
Additional reporting by Kyle Wagner.
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Looked like one bit that vapourised.
That’s incredible.
Is this guy a cop? There’s a meteorite flying by and he sounds like he’s ordering a coffee. I’d at least be uttering some sort of exuberant expletive.
(Title video. I posted this before the article turned into a video collection.)
He’s actually swearing a lot. Just in a monotone voice.
Aha, thanks. Always useful to have a polyglot around…
It’s actually very funny to hear. Imagine somebody speaking in that voice, but saying things like “motherf*kin’, sh*t, f*ck, f*cker, w*nker, etc.” for a couple of minutes.
War of the worlds is beginning… run to the hils!!!
Time to call Bruce.
As someone said on Twitter: The Decepticons are here!
the police later arrested charged the meteorites ex wife for speeding after the big rock initially denied being in front of the wheel at the time….
Nick Clegg refused to comment.
Amazing! Much better article than the BBC
Superman: Red Son.
It starts now.
God I hope so, that depiction of Batman was bloody brilliant!
“I find this hard to believe, as I doubt their air defence had the time to detect and target an object that appeared out of nowhere, from space.”
You know, that’s kind of the point of their air defence. To stop things coming out of nowhere.
Actually I think generally their job is to detect things and then defend the airspace from said things.
Most ‘things’ come from detectable sources, air bases, planes, aircraft carriers, missile silos etc… something coming from space (not nowhere) is probably generally a bit outside their area of expertise is so far we haven’t (apparently) been invaded from outer space and I don’t think satellite weapons have ever been used in anger.
Ballistic missiles travel practically in space, though, surely?
But they tend to have been launched from Earth and be tracked through their trajectory.
A fair point. However, Russia has a space program. It wouldn’t be at all weird to think they’re tracking NEOs. I’m pretty sure NASA shares their database publicly?
I’m sure they do track NEOs but I think random meteorites and such ‘can’ escape such detection if they’re small enough and it wouldn’t surprise me if one part of the Russian ‘machine’ knew about it but failed to pass it on to the relevant departments.
Or maybe they just wanted to see what would happen as they knew it was going to ‘hit’ far from Moscow anyway
You don’t know what the Russians are prepared for…
Having lived and worked in Russia for a year I can tell you from what I saw they’re not prepared for much; the corruption, falsification of information passed up the chain etc leads me to suspect that if push came to shove it would be a pretty poor show. (Not that I’m saying any other country would do better; look at how ‘well’ the super equipped Americans (and us) have done in Afghanistan and Iraq; it reminds me of the tale of an old Huey pilot in Vietnam saying he knew the Americans would lose when his helicopter was attacked with arrows, it’s not always the tech, sometimes it’s the heart or beliefs behind it.)
Yeah I believe the Russian soldiers are at the moment protesting their working conditions. One of their demands, socks! With the UK we did not equip our soldiers with boots, body armour or working guns. Corruptions the same the world over. Defence being so costly and all yet nothing ever seems to go right.
Being conscripted in to the Russian army is one of the most common reasons for suicide in Russian young men and a huge black market for doctors and senior army officials for providing documentation excusing the sons (of those that can pay) from military service.
This might have something to do with the giant Dalek apparently standing in the middle of Chelyabinsk…
I wonder if this happened 30 years ago we’d all be nuked by now?
Must be the Bugs hurling asteroids at us from the belt ringing Klendathu again
Good reference, do you want to learn more
Why did so few people film the actual meteor impact? Most videos seems more fascinated with filming the meteor as it comes in, and the damn trail in the sky, rather than following the meteor to the ground and filming the impact.
That’s because there seems to be no impact. Just an explosion in the air. All the damage is from the shockwave.
Yeah I’ve just realised that, but still. I’d film the meteor coming in, and keep the camera fixed on the general direction that the meteor went and film the explosion, regardless of whether it exploded in the air or due to a ground impact.
On thing’s for sure though, if there are this many videos of a relatively brief and rare event like a large meteor coming close to Earth, then there should have been some definitive videos of flying saucers and ghosts by now too, so I think we can disprove their existence.
Also, most of these are dash-cams or cctv, so not really suited for tracing a moving object in the sky.
Cos they’re running like buggery in the opposite direction I should think.
Did it hit the ground? Where are the pics/maps etc?
In all the videos the explosion seems to be way after the meteorite comes in, too long after to be an issue with the speed of sound and there are a lot of secondary explosions. Could most of the damage be caused by what it hit. rather than the meteor itself I wonder ?