Meteorite crash in Russia

http://rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/

by SuccintWork • 13 years ago

862 295 13 years ago

mmastrac3• 13 years ago

If this isn't some hoax, this is pretty wild. I'm not sure, but the general volume of news about this seems to point to it being real.

There's more information on this page here: http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2013/02/14/what-is-...

apaprocki5• 13 years ago

It takes events like this to highlight how awesome it is to have a large number of people constantly recording video. Integrated dashcams with a circular buffer should become ubiquitous standard equipment IMO.

1080p of first clip available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-0iwBEswE

ics2• 13 years ago

Does everyone in Russia have a dashcam or something? It seems like every other video I see on YouTube was recorded on one, and yet I don't know of anyone in Japan or the US with one installed (parking cams don't count). It's a great idea– I would probably get one if I still had a car, but it's amazing to me just how prevalent they seem in Russia. (Elsewhere too? I don't know. I'd love it if someone could enlighten me.)

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

Apparently, most do to avert insurance disputes.

achompas• 13 years ago

Can't find the link, but Kottke (of kottke.org) posted about this a while back. Russians apparently use dash cams to deter police corruption.

Edit: Sorry, it's not police--they're used to aid in car insurance claims. See below.

http://kottke.org/12/12/russians-are-dashboard-cam-crazy

apaprocki5• 13 years ago

It's a byproduct of Russians using them to combat corruption and scammers on the road. It's a fad that caught on based upon the underlying need. In the US most citizens don't have that underlying need. The cops, on the other hand, do have burden of proof and liability concerns, so police cars do have them. If the average citizen could be extorted on the highway they'd start to catch on here too :)

kumarm• 13 years ago

Yes apparently to avoid people jumping infront of car and suing the driver: http://www.animalnewyork.com/2012/russian-dashcam/

grinnick3• 13 years ago

I've heard the explanation that Russian insurance companies are much less likely to pay out if you don't have a dashcam. I'm not sure how true that is but it sounds likely to me.

drucken• 13 years ago

Police corruption, scams of all kinds including from organised crime and even pedestrians, auto-insurance extremely expensive without dash cams due to high claim history, poor road maintenance especially in winter conditions leading to higher volume of accidents, courts intolerant of any evidence other than video due to unreliability, etc.

johncoltrane• 13 years ago

Here is an extremely frightening dashcam video of the 2011 tsunami in Japan:

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

Lewton• 13 years ago

This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWvG4KAYJfY is why

cocoflunchy• 13 years ago

Explanation by a russian redditor: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/17ds8h/iama_russian_dr...

Magikgenie2004• 13 years ago

CNN just said that they have them in their cars to Stop Police Corruption! Maybe that is what we need to do here in America!

smokinjoe• 13 years ago

Maybe I've lived a sheltered life, but I've been watching that video over and over again.. It's like nothing I've ever seen before and I'm having a hard time believing it is real.

Just amazing. I love the technology we live with.

brokentone• 13 years ago

I can't help but notice this is only a few positions above the large hadron collider shutting down story. Correlation?

dredmorbius4• 13 years ago

Correlation is high. Causation is low.

jlgreco4• 13 years ago

Wait until you hear about pirates and global warming!

jessaustin• 13 years ago

Nowhere on the linked page is there any reference to a 6.9 quake. There wasn't an earthquake of any kind, although, "Witnesses said the explosion was so loud that it resembled an earthquake and thunder at the same time..."

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to believe anyway. Wasn't the rule that RT is considered accurate on any stories not involving Russia?

apaprocki5• 13 years ago

Yeah, 6.9 is not mentioned in the story and USGS does not show any recorded event there. Russian media was saying nothing hit the ground -- there was just an explosion in air which is seen in the video. I'm sure something hit the ground, though.

WestCoastJustin3• 13 years ago

I suspect the meteorite and earthquake are not related. The only recent earthquake that fits your description was M6.6 at 67.580°N 142.593°E [1], that's about ~2630 miles away from the reported meteorite impact in Chelyabinsk, Russia [2].

[1] http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000f76f#...

[2] http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_METEORITE?S...

lutusp8• 13 years ago

> I suspect the meteorite and earthquake are not related.

It wasn't an earthquake -- it was a very powerful sonic boom, and yes, it was caused by the meteorite's passing. A similar sonic boom flattened hundreds of square miles in Tunguska in 1908, after a much larger space object fell there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

WestCoastJustin3• 13 years ago

The title was changed. The original said there was a meteorite strike, followed by a 6.7 earthquake.

anigbrowl3• 13 years ago

It is believed that the incident may be connected to asteroid 2012 DA14, which measures 45 to 95 meters in diameter and will be passing by Earth tonight at around 19:25 GMT at the record close range of 27,000 kilometers.

apparently there was a risk that asteroid would intercept a satellite orbit. Too early to say, but it seems more likely than mere coincidence.

rquantz• 13 years ago

Phil Plait (Slate's Bad Astronomer) doesn't think they're related: https://twitter.com/BadAstronomer

Note especially: 12 hours is a long way at 8 km/sec, so this object in Ruissia was on a very different orbit than 2012 DA14.

and also: Also, apparently moving east-to-west tho I can’t say for sure. Anything on the orbit of DA14 would be moving south-to-north.

Obviously info is still pretty thin, and this article seems pretty speculative. I'd wait a few hours before jumping to any conclusions.

anigbrowl3• 13 years ago

Good catch, thanks for the additional data. Could be I'm too eager to see a pattern where none exists.

gph2• 13 years ago

>According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air defense unit

Anyone else catch this? Is this just a bad translation and they mean to say that an air defense unit tracked the meteorite on radar?

I wouldn't think any air defense system would be capable of actually intercepting a meteorite, but perhaps I'm wrong. Still doesn't seem like anything intercepted it from the videos.

marshray3• 13 years ago

"BREAKING NEWS - Urals meteorite shot down by Russian air defense - military source >>"

apaprocki5• 13 years ago

In the comments "Next Russia Today probably will write Putin himself shot the meteorite from his hunters gun."

instakill3• 13 years ago

The next sentence follows with:

  A missile salvo reportedly blew the meteorite to pieces at an altitude of 20 kilometers.

irollboozers2• 13 years ago

They were playing real life missile command.

eksith3• 13 years ago

A meteorite would be hypersonic when first entering the atomsphere and then supersonic the rest of the way until maybe a few hundred meters before impact. Besides that, if it's not a solid iron-nickle meteorite, it may even breakup or explode well above the surface instead of staying intact.

It's not quite like taking out a satellite in low Earth orbit in that there's plenty of information on its orbit, trajectory, tumbling characteristics, approximate mass etc... It would be very, very, very hard to intercept a meteorite without a lot of information before it even got close to Earth.

The report of a missile salvo taking it out is very suspect IMO. Without more information, it's hard to tell.

jandrewrogers2• 13 years ago

I don't know about "taking it out" per se but an air defense system designed to hit ballistic missiles in the terminal phase could also hit an inbound meteorite. It is within the performance envelope of those types of systems. That said, against a meteorite it won't do much good since it is an inert mass.

It is plausible that the Russians launched an interceptor just to be safe. If it is a meteor, it neither hurts nor helps. If it is a man-made structure, it will do some real damage to it. Either way they can always argue "better safe than sorry".

thresh4• 13 years ago

that's BS. Even S-300 or S-400 are unable to catch such a high-speed meteorite. And we don't have anything better than those.

mbell• 13 years ago

It seems remotely possible.

The short range missile in the S-400 can reach mach 12 and at least one source [1] seems to indicate that a meteorite at 15-20km altitude would be traveling 4500-9000mph (roughly mach 6-12) and of course they wouldn't be likely to be in a complete 'chasing' orientation.

I also wouldn't think a meteorite would be that hard to track with radar once you have an initial direction on it, depending on its composition.

[1] http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/faqf/

jpxxx• 13 years ago

Just so we're all on the same general reality, that part of the report is a profound and total lie, promulgated by a broken media system for uninteresting but undoubtedly unsavory reasons.

InclinedPlane14• 13 years ago

It's not impossible, but incredibly implausible. First off there isn't any evidence of an interception in any of the videos. Second, intercepting a hypersonic object with ordinary SAM sites is pretty much not going to happen. The amount of time it would take just to get a radar lock let alone to launch missiles would not leave much time for interception.

Interestingly, Russia does have an active ABM system. The old ABM-treaty allowed both the US and the USSR to have one ABM site active for each country, the US shut theirs down fairly quickly but the Soviets maintained and later upgraded theirs, protecting Moscow, and Russia has kept it. It's a nuclear warhead based system, it would be interesting to see what the hell would have happened if the same event happened over Moscow instead of Chelyabinsk.

cynwoody• 13 years ago

I'd be amused to hear Mathias Rust's assessment of that report.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

lutusp8• 13 years ago

I doubt anyone remembers Mathias Rust's famous and uninterrupted flight to Red Square. :)

instakill3• 13 years ago

It's amazing how something so tiny can illuminate the entire sky like that.

tectonic3• 13 years ago

I'm not convinced it was tiny.

tectonic3• 13 years ago

The explosion is clearly audible 25 seconds in to this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA

dredmorbius4• 13 years ago

Explosion or sonic boom. Large object, moving fast, not very aerodynamically optimized.

harshreality• 13 years ago

Great video except for the Vertical Video Syndrome [1]. Is that glass breaking right after the shockwave? I wonder what kind of overpressure it generated.

eta: ghshephard posted a link to a better video with the clear sound of glass breaking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5224858

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA

empraptor• 13 years ago

Maybe the sound that we heard traveled faster than the acoustic waves that broke the glass due to having different frequencies.

InclinedPlane14• 13 years ago

I'm almost certain that's a sonic boom. The upper atmosphere is several miles high and it would take the better part of a minute for the sound from a sonic boom to reach the ground from the stratosphere.

InclinedPlane14• 13 years ago

I'm going to change my mind on this. The more I watch videos the more I'm convinced that the loud bangs are actually the sound of the meteor exploding in an air burst, although I think there are some sonic booms mixed in.

Edit: OK, I'm going back to it being a sonic boom. The sounds are too sharp and too similar to other sonic booms. That's what I get for not trusting my gut the first time.

thresh4• 13 years ago

Too bad this meteorite didnt crash in Sochi. Could've helped covering the Olympics constructions thefts.

mmastrac3• 13 years ago

Here's a collection of insane videos of the event, some with the enormous sonic boom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIAm5hq8WWc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA

Can anyone translate what they are saying in the first one?

You can get a good idea of the new videos being posted using YouTube's "last hour" filter:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%...

photorized2• 13 years ago

In the first video, it's mostly "WTF" and "we are being bombed", or "military testing" - in the beginning

... followed by a more scientific discussion, about it being a meteorite breaking up etc

imslavko• 13 years ago

Not much to translate: "WTF??? What happened? It is f*cking WAR!", "Did you see that? Did they launch a rocket? Looks like they did... WTF!", "Shiiii... was it bomb?"

carbon82• 13 years ago

Two more good videos (high quality, trail/train detail, booms, etc):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDqYclzto7k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ozSq3yEm3g

andrewfelix2• 13 years ago

Why do you suppose there would be two contrails?

abcd_f4• 13 years ago

Sonic boom followed in 2 minutes, so the altitude was in 30-40km range. That's damn impressive, with all the sharp shadows from the buildings ... damn.

Gibbon• 13 years ago

A bunch of videos around town and some photos of damage etc.

http://oleg-kozyrev.livejournal.com/4468083.html

Examples of other meteorite strikes in the past:

http://oleg-kozyrev.livejournal.com/4468452.html

Damaged zinc plant? https://twitter.com/Dokhrimovich/statuses/302269134685757442

Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-russia-meteorit...

AP News Story: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_METEORITE?S...

Video close to epicenter.. Loud boom then broken windows and alarms.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0cFOIoITW4

Hashtag #Челябинск on twitter for more info.

mmastrac3• 13 years ago

There's a video of two guys driving by the zinc plant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptnGvd0dmLI

jaxb• 13 years ago

> damaged zinc plant?

Yes, that's what it says

InclinedPlane14• 13 years ago

I'm not sure the meteor hit the zinc plant. Considering how loud the sonic booms were it's possible that they caused enough structural damage to an old brick building to result in a partial collapse.

I wish we had more information.

Edit: on second thought, it could easily be a fragment, we'll see.

detst• 13 years ago

I don't understand the language but I hear lots of "yeah boy" in these videos. They seem less concerned than I'd imagine myself to be.

Edit: haha, thanks for the explanations; that changes my interpretation of their reactions.

photorized2• 13 years ago

They are basically cursing.

zalew• 13 years ago

yebat (ебать), loosely translated and depending on form, it could mean either 'oh fuck' or an explicit description of a strong impact ;) we slavs have infinite possibilities of cursing.

instakill3• 13 years ago

haha, no it basically means fuck in Russian.

DeepDuh3• 13 years ago

This one is much better, it actually shows the incoming meteor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wUqmS35REY

colkassad• 13 years ago

You can see the blast wave as well

creamyhorror• 13 years ago

Here's a great dashcam video that captures the meteor arcing across its field of vision and lighting up the scene more brightly than the sun like a nuclear blast (first submitted to HN by dennisgorelik). I almost thought it was a hoax, and even tried to examine the video for signs that it was CGI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJOJ6B2XOyA

The guy doesn't even say anything for a long while, just starts speeding up.

edit: Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy (Slate) think it's unrelated to the 2012DA14 asteroid, because of the timing gap and incorrect direction of travel. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking... This could have turned out very badly if the thing had hit the ground...could we have caught this one, and why didn't we?

andrewfelix2• 13 years ago

That is surreal. My jaw dropped as it came into perspective. Looks like it came straight out of Hollywood.

rooker• 13 years ago

And we get to enjoy the pleasant tunes of Leona Lewis.

heed• 13 years ago

Why does the timestamp on the video say December 31st 2012?

abcd_f4• 13 years ago

The RT article quote local (military) newspaper as saying "A missile salvo blew the meteorite to pieces at an altitude of 20 kilometers".

I wonder if it's true.

madaxe14• 13 years ago

There probably is a nuclear blast in that mix. They stated that anti-missile systems intercepted it - the only thing with a hope in hell of reaching and destroying/breaking a meteor is the 53T6 Gazelle, which has a 10kt warhead.

jevinskie• 13 years ago

Can anyone explain why I see so many dashcam videos from Russia?

127001brewer• 13 years ago

...could we have caught this one ...

According to Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson (speaking on NBC's "Today Show") it was too small to detect.[1]

[1] http://todaynews.today.com/_news/2013/02/15/16973245-neil-de...

dennisgorelik2• 13 years ago

My guess is HN rating system discriminates against submissions on YouTube.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5224466

edouard12345672• 13 years ago

The Lada is having a hard time catching up with the meteorite.

sheri• 13 years ago

After the initial boom there seem to be a bunch of secondary smaller pops. Anyone know what those are?

pixl97• 13 years ago

Reflections of the shockwave/sonic boom off of other solid objects. Echos pretty much.

picklefish• 13 years ago

This one uploaded shows the actual meteor, because it's from a dashcam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuKtVGdPESM

laumars3• 13 years ago

This one is rather impressive to watch as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-0iwBEswE

pacomerh2• 13 years ago

I don't understand why some of the people are still listening to the radio and so uninterested.

playing_colours2• 13 years ago

[Edit] Some translation from the first video: A lot of dirty language. Just after thunder: "What the f..k?! What is going on? Bombing! Preliminary bombardment!" "Don't worry for now. Nothing is clear yet. It's a preliminary bombardment. Wow, what a film I shot! Go for our jackets! Run!" When running: "It's something serious, run!""Don't worry men! The most interesting is only beginning!" At the entrance of student dormitory: "We can't go inside for our jackets?" "You can't enter!" Then "Guys, warm up, I feel cold! I have filmed everything: explosion, falling, everything!" - "Show what you filmed." - "Later-later! No idea what to do now!" "Something flied by and there was flash" "Later, we don't know if something else will explode" "It was flash and then it flied to the forest, then we ran out I started to film and then thunder" "What an adventure! Cool!" "You see it entered the atmosphere and started to burn and then the pieces fell to the ground" "F..k I thought it's war!" "No worries" "I didn't understand what exploded. It's a small comet but what exploded?" "Mirrors broke"."I like it! The mirrors are broken in the building" "OK, bye, stop for now"

myth_drannon• 13 years ago

In English it would be more correct to say "preliminary bombardment" :) not "Аrtillery preparation"

soci3• 13 years ago

A huge crater somewhere in the desert with fire flames everywhere. It's jaw dropping...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cT8vZ-7vxQ

I just found this by using the "last hour" filter mmastrac suggested.

EDIT: It doesn't seem to be a crater caused by a meteorite. By looking at the youtube video "cfn" (comment below) looks like it's a gas explosion in 2007. Still, amazing.

cfn• 13 years ago

Flaming Crater, Darvaza Turkmenistan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEjoga1yrn0

obituary_latte• 13 years ago

Wow.

Hard to get a sense of scale, but it looks pretty big. Maybe a few hundre feet in diameter?

Also, how much heat is needed to set friggin _dirt_ on fire?

alxndr• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_Hell

lutorm6• 13 years ago

Yeah, an impact crater wouldn't look like that. It would look like one of the craters on the moon with large amounts of ejecta thrown out radially around it.

SanjayUttam• 13 years ago

Those sounds are absolutely chilling.

marknutter• 13 years ago

Awesome youtube comment for those who get the reference:

"EMERGENCY AN ANGEL HAS BEEN ENCOUNTERED IN THE VICINITY"

geoka9• 13 years ago

> Can anyone translate what they are saying in the first one?

You probably don't want to know. Lots of cussing :)

He actually has no idea what's going on. At one point he jokes about artillery strikes and then starts calming down his friends ("Don't be afraid, nothing's happened yet.")

Then he urges his friends to go grab their jackets (apparently they ran out to the street without them). While running, he exclaims "now, that's some serious shit!" and then urges his friends to be calm once more.

"The most interesting stuff is about to begin."

The guard at the entrance tells them they can't come in to take their jackets.

"That thing flew by, there was a flash and it crashed in the woods."

"What an adventure!"

"It entered the atmosphere and started burning. The remaining stuff then crashed."

"I thought a war's underway."

"Don't cower. But I didn't get what the explosions were about."

"The windows are all smashed."

"I love it!!!"

....

It must be some kind of college. The kids must be students.

davesims• 13 years ago

Wow, check out the pressure wave (I assume) that moves the camera dramatically forward just before the blast is heard. That was one big freakin bang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA&t=0m26s

lobster45• 13 years ago

He first said it is preperation. Something to prepare for. He is saying take your jackets and lets run. The best is yet to come. When he runs into the group he describes that it was flying overhead. Then he points to the smoke saying it was in the atmosphere. People said that could be war starting. They were not sure of the reason for the explosion. He almost got hit by the broken glass.

thresh4• 13 years ago

It's amusing how fast the shadows are in those videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qin41lP9r2U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgBZMsaEN6s

ghshephard• 13 years ago

Excellent video of some crowd reactions - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7mLUIDGqmw

Has someone running, after the boom, comes across crowds being directed out of buildings. You can almost sense that they really have no idea what's going on.

rdl4• 13 years ago

I don't get why everyone seems to be running out of (what appear to be) fairly sturdy concrete buildings and into the street. Sure, a building won't protect you from an incoming meteorite of any size, but being indoors might protect from fragments if an incoming meteor hits something else.

thresh4• 13 years ago

...provided you know it is a meteorite attack. Apparently, no one did.

rdl4• 13 years ago

Even more so if it's incoming explosives, which by their nature generate a lot of fragments (more than solid impacts). Generally, if I hear explosions, running out into the street is the last thing I want to do...

jlgreco4• 13 years ago

Frankly even in hindsight I would be running out of buildings, not into them. That was one hell of a sonic boom, and do you really want to take the chance of seismic activity following shortly? I would be more concerned about the building falling onto me than the meteorite.

In uncertain circumstances, I think I would almost always prefer not being under concrete.

rdl4• 13 years ago

I guess I assume loud boom = bomb, which makes me want to be behind concrete. But maybe earthquake is more likely -- it's still arguably better to be in a sturdy building than on the street near non-sturdy buildings, though.

OWaz• 13 years ago

They wouldn't know what it was if they were inside. Few months ago in Tucson an F16 broke the sound barrier, some pilot did it while practicing for an air show. I was outside walking back towards my office and saw the jet fly overhead. Then "BOOM" and I knew what the boom came from. People indoors thought a truck crashed in to the office since the building shook and ceiling panels fell.

It's hard to know what caused the boom if they didn't see something first.

zokier2• 13 years ago

Why not run outside? I haven't heard anyone killed by meteorites, so I wouldn't consider them very threatening. If it's not threatening then why not go out and enjoy the show?

lutusp8• 13 years ago

> I haven't heard anyone killed by meteorites, so I wouldn't consider them very threatening.

Just for the historical record, an Egyptian dog was allegedly killed by a meteorite:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite

Quote: "The most infamous reported fatality from a meteorite impact is that of an Egyptian dog that was killed in 1911, although this report is highly disputed."

Another quote: "The first known modern case of a human hit by a space rock occurred on 30 November 1954 in Sylacauga, Alabama.[41] There a 4 kilograms (8.8 lb) stone chondrite[42] crashed through a roof and hit Ann Hodges in her living room after it bounced off her radio. She was badly bruised."

She was also extremely fat, and the meteorite grazed her ample side. I'll bet it motivated a soul-searching consideration of a weight-loss program:

http://blogs.funeralwise.com/dying/files/2012/05/Anne-Hodges...

coldtea• 13 years ago

>I haven't heard anyone killed by meteorites, so I wouldn't consider them very threatening. If it's not threatening then why not go out and enjoy the show?

The only reason you haven't heard of anyone killed by meteorites is chance, not some inherent impossibility of it happening.

If the fall was a few miles to the side, you would have heard of tens of thousands of people being killed by meteorite, seeing that a few cities were nearby.

In any case, I don't think it's wise to just "enjoy the show". How do you know at that point that it's not a cluster of meteorites, with more to fall soon nearby?

lutusp8• 13 years ago

> I don't get why everyone seems to be running out of (what appear to be) fairly sturdy concrete buildings and into the street.

Well, since one brick structure collapsed, and since one's immediate impression was that it was an earthquake, running out into the street seem perfectly reasonable. The fact that it was a powerful sonic boom, not an earthquake, would be something I might figure out at my leisure only after running outside.

cabirum• 13 years ago

thats how it looks from the inside of buildings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs6sj6xAzeg

stuaxo• 13 years ago

Leg it !

mapt• 13 years ago

In these circumstances, running outside of an apartment block is not bad because of debris from an impactor crator, it's bad because the sonic boom will shatter glass windows with ease, raining down lethal shards on the people below.

This holds for a nuclear strike as well as a bolide.

AlexanderZ• 13 years ago

I happen to live 300km from the epicenter. The meteorite was seen in home town as well. I made a list of all the videos I could find: http://say26.com/meteorite-in-russia-all-videos-in-one-place

adaml_623• 13 years ago

The video of the loading dock door blowing in is extraordinary.

walls• 13 years ago

And of course it's the only one that seems to have been removed.

sumeetchawla• 13 years ago

OMG... That is scary!

knowaveragejoe4• 13 years ago

Maybe this will help people appreciate that space is not some other world on TV, instead we are in space right now. Yes, it can reach out and touch us.

gph2• 13 years ago

Just to be pedantic for the hell of it, we're really in space-time, and it's that "time" dimension that makes "space" capable of reaching out and touching us :D

ithkuil• 13 years ago

That's not being pedantic. That's mixing up "space" as in "the region of space above the heaven, for most part consisting of vast emptiness and occasional celestial bodies" and "space" as the "A continuous area or expanse that is free, available, or unoccupied" and of course it's technical usage in physics. And this is being pedantic for the hell of it :-)

grinnick3• 13 years ago

I can't get over how long it takes for the sonic boom to hit. This video has the meteorite trail on camera for 27 seconds before you hear the boom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA

How fast does something have to be travelling to build up a delay like that?

knowaveragejoe4• 13 years ago

While it's moving at great speed, it's really about distance that determines the gap with sonic booms. Speed of sound is ~340m/s at sea level, so using that value with a gap of 27 seconds we can assume the boom originated ~9.1km away from the camera(thus it took 27 seconds for the sound to reach the camera). The distance is probably wrong given the speed of sound is different depending on the altitude.

The speed had more to do with the magnitude of the boom itself.

jlgreco4• 13 years ago

And to be clear, there isn't any one "boom" event with a sonic boom. It is an ongoing event for stationary observers, a pressure front that follows the object and is heard when it passes by you.

grinnick3• 13 years ago

Of course, that makes more sense.

I was thinking of terms of the pressure front lagging further behind the meteorite in proportion to the length of time that the meteorite is traveling at a speed greater than the speed of sound.

Thanks for the explanation.

tectonic3• 13 years ago

FYI, if you see photos of a burning crater, those are fake. That's the Door to Hell, in Turkmenistan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_Hell

n3rdy2• 13 years ago

Well that's a relief.

A door to hell is a lot less scary than a meteor crater.

justin_vanw• 13 years ago

Wow, do you know how lucky we all are? Silly little shit like this could easily start WW3.

We need complete ICBM disarmament. They can keep their bombs and we can keep ours (for now), but we should restrict delivery systems such that there is a built in lag (bombers taking many minutes or hours to reach their targets), and can be recalled. ICBM's can be launched in a moment, and it is impossible to recall them or disable them once they are underway.

Jach• 13 years ago

No sane military would introduce such a lag. Furthermore I think your concerns are overblown. After all, something far more "potentially disastrous" happened in 1983 at a high point in Soviet/US tensions, and fortunately the guy in charge of retaliation launching had the common sense to reason a war wouldn't be started with one (or in his case, 5) missiles. http://lesswrong.com/lw/jq/926_is_petrov_day/

twoodfin• 13 years ago

Another problem with a "long fuse" approach: It offers either antagonist a (seemingly) low-cost path of escalation (say, "just" deploying the ICBMs to their silos) during a crisis. This not only necessitates a comparable response, it is subject to being interpreted as more belligerent than intended. After you've gone a few rounds of this, you're right back where we are now, launch keys always ready to turn, except this time you're riding the momentum of mounting brinksmanship.

ChuckMcM4• 13 years ago

That is an amazing event. I am not sure I buy the meteorite story. Has anyone checked on 2012-DA14 [1] the asteroid that was supposed to cross between the earth and geosync orbit this evening? One conjecture would be it knocked something out of orbit.

The air defense stuff is somewhat hard to believe, we don't intercept de-orbiting space junk, much less less hypersonic meteors. Further every missile interceptor that is publicly disclosed (which includes the US attempts at an exo-atmospheric interceptor) have boost stages that generate a lot of vapor, there is no rising vapor trail in any of the videos of a ground based interceptor.

Finally there is the magnitude of the flash. Given the lack of sparkles on the video I don't believe what ever exploded was nuclear but on the videos with timers watching the flash and timing the 'boom' correlates with the 20 - 25 km (80,000') in altitude. One hopes it wasn't a surveillance aircraft that was destroyed. I'm sure if it was we'll hear about that in the morning.

Definitely a mystery.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2013/f...

marshray3• 13 years ago

This guy https://twitter.com/BadAstronomer/status/302313851511271426 seems pretty sure it's unrelated to 2012DA14. And he has 230K followers on Twitter, so ... shrug

apaprocki5• 13 years ago

The general idea being that the Earth moves ~100,000km/hr around the sun, and with the asteroid fly-by many hours away, that would mean a pretty wide orbital gap.

mkr-hn• 13 years ago

You can get 230k followers on the cheap these days. Phil Plait is credible, though.

carlisle_• 13 years ago

I think it's a really bad idea to start using Twitter followers as a credential. That being said Phil Plait is a legit astronomer and has a Ph.D in Astronomy and worked on the Hubble Telescope and has done a TED talk on defending Earth from asteroids. With real credentials like those you're doing a disservice to first mention the number of Twitter followers to validate his expertise.

InclinedPlane14• 13 years ago

An asteroid the size of 2012-DA14 would hit with a force of nearly 3 megatons. This meteor, and it is enormously consistent with a meteor and nothing else, would likely only be around the size of a car or so, over a hundred times smaller in each dimension (and over 10,000x dimmer and harder to detect via telescope) than 2012-DA14.

ChuckMcM4• 13 years ago

Not to be a pill if you read closely I said "something it knocked out of orbit" not it. Because yes, if it had decided to hit the planet we'd be glued to CNN or something right now.

One of the interesting things to me is the 'herd' phenomena that comes about because of gravity creating clumps of things which, when they collide with something else become a sort of herd moving in a similar direction. Comet tails, and wandering asteroids, rarely do things fly through space it seems without some sort of companion material flying along with them.

Not the case here according to sources who say it had a different orbit than 2014-DA14 but it was something I was wondering about. Has anyone found a USAF Space Command radar track yet?

Someone• 13 years ago

I don't think we have anything in orbit that would burn that bright, certainly not for that long.

In orbit satellites are relatively slow (10 km/s-ish) and light (10 tons is a lot. The ISS is way heavier, but too flimsy to make it down in one piece)

Speed, in particular, counts, as kinetic energy goes with the square of speed. At 70km/s (IIRC, the top speed a meteorite is expected to have relative to earth), a kg of meteorite has as much kinetic energy as 50-ish kg of in orbit mass.

abcd_f4• 13 years ago

How a petty aircraft can generate so much light upon exploding?

madaxe14• 13 years ago

In the various videos, there are a few noteworthy artefacts.

1) After the bright white flash, we see debris flying in the opposite direction to the meteor's path, in a parabolic trajectory - i.e. falling.

2) Your AMM system doesn't need to be hypersonic to intercept a hypersonic target. The key here is "intercept". You launch a missile to be where the target is going to be, in a direction >90deg away from the target's path.

3) The Russian AMM system that would be used in these circumstances would be the 53T6 Gazelle, which is equipped with a 10kt warhead.

I'm inclined to give the air defence line credence.

danparsonson• 13 years ago

> 1) After the bright white flash, we see debris flying in the opposite direction to the meteor's path, in a parabolic trajectory - i.e. falling.

I thought that at first, but on second watching I'm wondering if that's just lens flare? See

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t...

about 00:19, I'm assuming that's the part you're talking about?

jff• 13 years ago

I don't buy it. Here's a 15kt explosion: http://youtu.be/B9F-l_3eLcE?t=9m

I've never witnessed a nuclear explosion first-hand, but that seems like a mighty small flash for a nuclear explosion.

Edit: Also, why don't we hear any EMP effects on the radio signal in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJOJ6B2XOyA ? If anything, the audio gets clearer right at the point you seem to be claiming is a nuclear detonation.

late2part• 13 years ago

And the second stage of HAARP testing concluded.....

irollboozers2• 13 years ago

So, uh, NASA was expecting this. They were going to have a livestream chat about this? Er, looks like they got the prediction slightly off.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid201...

*For the person who downvoted me, there is supposed to be a near earth flyby tomorrow of an asteroid called 2012 DA14 which will be livestreamed with commentary by NASA here: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2. A reasonable explanation would be that the event today was a chuck or asteroid as part of that expected fly by. The astroid is expected to be 17,000 miles away from Earth.

dmor• 13 years ago

We are compiling coverage, videos, etc. in a single place on Referly (obviously there are NO product links) - including many links found here. Would appreciate any contributions, suggestions, translations and feedback:

http://refer.ly/meteor-over-russia/c/15aeda3c773d11e2bfbf220...

rdl4• 13 years ago

I wish you would put a B612 Foundation link on there (which is sort of a product link, I guess)

maqr• 13 years ago

Do meteorites really do this? I've never heard of another like this event before, and I always hear reports about meteors 'almost' hitting earth well in advance of the possible collision date.

I didn't think the sky could simply open up and rain down hellfire without anybody spotting it beforehand.

InclinedPlane14• 13 years ago

Yup, they do, one just did. Based on some guesses I'd estimate that this particular meteor is a rock that might be a few hundred kg or so and maybe a meter or less in diameter. Rocks this size are very hard to spot, they are about 10,000x dimmer than the 2012 DA14 asteroid, and that much more difficult to detect. Also, the meteor struck during the day, which may be an indication that it originated as an object orbiting the Sun just inside the Earth's orbit, a class of objects that are the most difficult to detect with our current equipment.

lutusp8• 13 years ago

> Do meteorites really do this? I've never heard of another like this event before ...

In that case, it's time for you to read about Tunguska in 1908:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

tokipin• 13 years ago

that thing was no joke

dalke• 13 years ago

Sure. There was one like this in the US in the early 1990s - the Peekskill fireball. There was also the Great Daylight 1972 Fireball, where the meteor entered and then exited the atmosphere.

The Peekskill meteorite was estimated to be 26 pounds and 1 ft across before it entered the atmosphere. Spotting something like that in space is hard.

peacewise2• 13 years ago

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking...

peacewise2• 13 years ago

"Preliminary indications are that it was a meteorite rain," an emergency official told RIA-Novosti. "We have information about a blast at 10,000-meter (32,800-foot) altitude. It is being verified." http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-russia-meteorit...

spitx3• 13 years ago

  8:10 GMT: Oleg Malkov, an aerospace scientist at 
  Moscow State University, told Komsomolskaya Pravda
  newspaper   that the meteorite went undetected by 
  space scanners,   likely because it was coming from
  the direction of the Sun.
  "We can only register stones coming from the 
  direction of the night sky," he explained. Malkov
  confirmed that   the meteor shower in the Urals 
  was not connected to the 2012DA14 asteroid that 
  will approach Earth in a few hours.

  7:46 GMT: Ekaterinburg’s observatory has officially 
  deemed the incident a fireball meteor shower. No 
  evacuations were called for, and radiation levels 
  were determined to be normal.

  Source: 
  http://rt.com/news/russia-meteor-meteorite-asteroid
  -chelyabinsk-291/

lampooned• 13 years ago

That is terrifiying.

lutusp8• 13 years ago

From the videos, this was almost certainly a metallic meteorite (stony meteorites rarely survive their flight through the atmosphere). And it's very likely that part of it got to the ground intact. Get ready for stories about recovering a lot of meteorite material in the next few days.

The contrails, and the videos, show that the meteorite (or pair of meteorites) grew very hot, but survived at least in part and probably fell to the surface. I would love to see the recovery effort.

Notice the long delay between recording the image of the contrail and the sonic boom. This reveals how high the meteorite's path was at the location of the recording.

spitx3• 13 years ago

Image updates as of 3:30 AM ET

  http://goo.gl/V7491
  http://goo.gl/4Rqk0
  http://goo.gl/WHR65
  http://goo.gl/PUH6q
  http://goo.gl/qlXE3
  http://goo.gl/LRD52

alinspired• 13 years ago

They are confused on what's going on and cursing badly :)

nitrogen• 13 years ago

A couple of years ago a smaller meteor blazed over the western United States, lighting up large parts of Utah (http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=8714738), but lacking the sonic boom. I did see the Utah meteor directly, and I imagine that today's was significantly more awesome and more terrifying.

zokier2• 13 years ago

With all these videos, I wonder if Photosynth-style 3D reconstruction of the scene would be possible. That would be very interesting to look at.

spitx3• 13 years ago

  9:36 GMT: There is a high chance that another 
  meteorite could enter the Earth’s atmosphere in 
  the next few hours, Sergey Smirnov from Pulkovo 
  Observatory told Vesti news channel.
  
  9:07 GMT: "The object could be about a meter
  in diameter and weigh a few tons,” Valeriy Shuvalov
  of the Institute of Geosphere Dynamics told 
  RIA-Novosti. 
  “As it entered the atmosphere, it broke into a 
  cloud of pieces that flew on, creating a blast wave 
  and emitting light. That's where the flashes came 
  from, as well as broken windows. Most of the 
  object’s material evaporated, the remaining pieces
  slowed down and fell. It was most likely of iron 
  nature as it penetrated so far through the 
  atmosphere. 
  However, we still don't have the exact data on 
  the debris."

Source: http://rt.com/news/russia-meteor-meteorite-asteroid-chelyabi...

tripzilch3• 13 years ago

> a high chance that another meteorite could enter the Earth’s atmosphere in the next few hours

can you get another source than RT? they seem to aim for senation first, accuracy second

soci3• 13 years ago

Yet another compilation of all the videos here: http://www.comandotibidabo.com/meteoritos-urales/

I've been amazed by how huge the explosion is being so far away from the meteorite crash.

strobe• 13 years ago

place where meteor crashed is only 100 miles from me but I got to know about it today from web-news :)

rowanseymour• 13 years ago

Half life 3 viral video campaign... ?

lifeisstillgood3• 13 years ago

Side issue: Anyone know what a Google Driverless car would make of a fireball heading towards it out of the sky? Is there a default action in case of uncertainty? Brake? Swerve? Any of those by these drivers could have been worse than the "yebat"

SteveC• 13 years ago

This would be a case where the driver would be expected to take over.

lifeisstillgood3• 13 years ago

Car Voice: Yebat! There's a freaking asteroid heading down the road. On the wrong side! Bloody Thrun never had a test case for this. Sod it. You drive ....

:-)

Thank you, I needed a good laugh

Edit: I have real work I should be doing: http://i.imgur.com/usRX31z.jpg

anigbrowl3• 13 years ago

Yikes, >500 people injured: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-russia-meteorit...

:-(

rodolphoarruda• 13 years ago

When you look at a commercial jet flying at 10k meters from the ground, it takes a long while until it disappears from the skyline. This meteorite crossed the entire skyline in a matter of seconds. That's just mind bogging. Also, the sound blast arrived waaay after the main explosion, and since it's been traveling at ~360 meters per second. I wonder if anyone here could estimate the speed of that rock in the atmosphere.

barrynolan• 13 years ago

I was wondering why there are so many dashboard cams. Answer: from the NYTimes

"Some of the numerous videos that quickly emerged of the incident highlighted a distinctly Russian phenomenon: the dashboard cam. As Business Insider recently pointed out, they are commonplace in Russia partly because of the dangerous driving conditions that lead to so many accidents, and with an unreliable police force such cameras can provide valuable evidence following a crash."

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/video-captures-f...

DanBC3• 13 years ago

Did NASA have this on their list of objects they were tracking, and did they see it going down as it did? (I'm not suggesting that they should have been able to predict it.)

It's amazing that we have so much coverage of this.

I really hope someone somewhere is making a life size mockup of this object, and then showing on a map what damage would be done by bigger objects.

"This is what something the size of a car would do"

"This is what something the size of a house would do"

"This is the average size of the biggest 5% of the objects that we track in Earth orbit, and here's the damage that'd do".

(A bit like that atomic bomb map).

homakov• 13 years ago

that's how we roll

ANH• 13 years ago

This site has an image of a hole in the ice of Lake Chebarkul: http://say26.com/meteorite-in-russia-all-videos-in-one-place

Here's the lake: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=lake+chebarkul&hl=en&...

~40 miles due west of Chelyabinsk and a little south.

joshuahedlund• 13 years ago

Is it really just a coincidence that this happened the same day as the 2012DA14 asteroid? Some news articles are saying this came from the other direction and that these kinds of smaller asteroids hit 5-10 times a year, and while I put a low trust in my memory I don't recall seeing this stuff all over the news (and at the top of HN!) every couple of months... Or is that true but normally they land in the ocean or unpopulated areas and this one just happened to hit an area with lots of dashboard cams and just happened to occur on the same day as the 2012DA14 flyby? I'm sure less probabilistic things have happened in the history of the universe, but I'm still very curious. Or is it soon to do much but speculate?

gnur• 13 years ago

Yeah, it is a coincidence. It was debunked pretty early on, mainley because the direction it is flying in exactly the opposite direction the 2012DA14 will be flying in.

mitchty• 13 years ago

Also the only reason its getting press is the video most likely. That really helps at getting the reptile brain attention of viewers.

interconnector• 13 years ago

Nature article: http://www.nature.com/news/russian-meteor-largest-in-a-centu...

MayankJain• 13 years ago

Insane!

volna80• 13 years ago

compilation of different videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5...

Meteorite crash in Russia

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