A series of explosions in the skies of Russia’s Urals region, reportedly caused by a meteorite shower, has sparked panic in three major cities. Witnesses said that houses shuddered, windows were blown out and cellphones have stopped working.
According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted…
A newly discovered asteroid about half the size of a football field will pass nearer to Earth than any other known object of its size on Friday…
Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
25 Comments!
How the hell does someone intercept a meteor?
Have you seen some of the Russian video of the thing?
Did they deem it intercepted or do they actually have some technology to do it?
POST Gr4F1X of Teh weeeeeeeeeeeeeeK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*CLAP*CALP*CLAP*
PS: Global Waaaarming!!!!
Even tho he’s not suppose to be on my computer I have to laugh
Vodka was probably involved.
This thing was moving at 30 km/sec in a crossing shot, but ICBM RVs enter the atmosphere at around 8 km/sec in a plunging shot (shotgunning terms). No way this thing was intercepted by an ABM.
What they probably meant to say was that defense radar/IR sytems detected or tracked it.
Less vodka was involved.
That, uh, that doesn’t even make sense.
One probably shouldn’t quote a Russian Army private coming out of the all-ranks club.
We can’t believe our own government how can we believe anything from Russia? Who knows all evil lurks in the heart of man?
Re: the “intercept” explosion
It looks sort’a like the Patriot/SCUD videos from the Gulf War, but it ain’t.
At 30 km/sec in the atmosphere, a rock-iron meteor gets whatchacal hot. The light you see is due entirely to temperature. High-altitude (low-density) atmospheric heating doesn’t melt or vaporize the whole meteor, just the surface, so it ablates (small surface bits break off, glow, and vaporize); but at some point, the temperature gets really high (time and higher air density) and the heat penetrates further, so the structural integrity of a thick-enough layer of material fails. Any gases may also reach high pressure. At that point larger amounts of material come off, and all these particles are exposed to the heating air, so that stuff goes super-bright, too. The newly exposed chunk is increasingly thermally shocked, so it begins to fail quickly in a cascading exposure of material to critical atmospheric heating.
You know, it goes *kablooie!*
If it happens quickly enough, this may produce a noticeable atmospheric shock wave. Any unvaporized pieces (now too small and/or too slow to go kablooie) hit the ground as meteorites.
Comet meteors probably fall apart sooner due to weaker structure, and they don’t produce iron chunks as meteorites.
(What? Discovery Chanel.)
Note: I did not use a meteorite-study-as-rockette-science pun … for good reason.
Tell Pootie he’s wearing the hearing protectors upside down. Go on, I DARE ya!
Just imagine the incredibly small variations in time and space (in astronomical terms) that caused it to happen in Russia instead of DC.
Aaaaand from a low-information Russian politician,
it was a US weapons test.
It WAS intercepted! By planet Earth! I diddent git my PhD in Nuclear Adverbs for nothing, ya know……
So, answer me this, ColJ …
Why ain’t there no craters on the dadburned Sun, then? Huh? Huh?
(Whaat?!)
All I see are pics of two Tongue-guster Firebulls.
We can expect a horde of meteorite-hunters to descend on that part of Russia real soon now.
Cottage industries will pop up all over Russia, selling authentic pieces of the meteorite.
That double-contrail is sure interesting…..
I notice that in the traffic photos, none of the cars slow down or stop when the bright flash hits. Seems that would be a normal reaction. (But then, I don’t know about Russian drivers.)
From the videos, it look like it hit (if it got that far) at a grazing angle, which means that the debris path would be real long.
He has a leeetle head.
Easy one, Doug. Because God hates Russians, an he knows 11 time zones is a easy target……..
RUSSIAN BLACK HUMOR: One of the most popular jokes was that the meteorite was supposed to fall on Dec. 21, 2012 – when many believed the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world – but was delivered late by Russia’s notoriously inefficient postal service.
rickn8or … he didn’t want to muss the hair!
ColJ,
Reminds me of the lightning-on-a-golf-course joke:
If you want to be safe, hold up a 2-iron, ’cause not even God can hit a 2-iron.
(What? Well that’s the Lee Trevino version.)
@DM6 — ChemTraaaailz !!!1!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*runz in circles*
@mech10 — yeah…. *sigh*
@SK19 — ISWYDT bwaaahahahahahahhahaaaaaa!
^ Chem trails
Dammit !
Dang it!
On looking at more footage, it’s clear that I neglected to comment on the coolest physicsology thing … the sonic boom!
Man, I loved those as a kid, back in the days when they could fly supersonic up in Michigan.
(What? Well, the AF prob’ly had a good window-replacement budget back then.)
Christian, Muslim, Vodkan
rickn8or (9)
I looked at that pic of Putin again; and it appears that someone behind him did, indeed, say that aloud.
Perhaps that’s when the photography and his employment ceased.