February 15, 2013

Meteor Strike!

One of the Brickmuppets crack team of science babes brings us news of asteroid 2012 DA14 which is going to pass incredibly close to Earth this afternoon. The space rock, about the size of....What?


 Spectacularly so!

...Oh! An asteroid, apparently unrelated to 2012DA14 and estimated to have only weighed about 10 tons, entered the atmosphere and came down on Russiaa bit before 9:30 this morning local time, but due to its small size it was not detected before entry.

The bolide spectacularly detonated over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk and caused a surprising amount of damage. Nearly 1000 people are reported injured as I type this.






Pics via

Most of the damage seems to have come from the sonic boom and possibly the concussion of the explosion itself as the damage to the zinc plant above seems remarkable for a sonic boom. At least some fragments of the object impacted with the largest reported impact at this time being this neat hole punched in the ice of a nearby reservoir.
(Pic via RT)





Instapundit points out it's probably still a good idea to duck and cover when you see a flash of light in the sky. Here's why...



OUCH! Those poor kids! I hope no one was blinded.

UPDATE: Compilation of videos here:



UPDATE 2: I'm going out the door, but Scott Lowther has a huge roundup here, here and here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:26 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 I don't understand what's up with burning hole in the end.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Fri Feb 15 15:52:47 2013 (RqRa5)

2 "Derp" Sorry, That bit at the end has been making the rounds allegedly representing a second impact crater.

I'm pretty sure it's actually a Russian natural gas well that collapsed and caught fire and has been burning for decades.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Feb 15 16:45:05 2013 (vp6an)

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