Meteor Strikes Town in Russia

[Brando]

When reached in his prison cell for comment, Oscar Pistorious said that this story really has legs.

[mesmith31]

[Mr. Laz]

Report: Russian meteor blast injures at least 1,000 people

By Phil Black, Boriana Milanova and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN
updated 11:00 AM EST, Fri February 15, 2013

A meteor streaks through the sky above Russia's Urals region on Friday, February 15, before exploding with a flash and boom that shattered glass in buildings and left hundreds of people hurt.
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Meteor hits Russian region



STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: About 1,000 people have reported injuries, state news agency reports
• Meteor strike and Friday's asteroid flyby are unrelated, a NASA spokesman says
• A meteoroid entered the atmosphere and shattered into fragments, scientists say
• A bright white flash appeared in the sky for a few seconds, followed by a heavy bang

Did you see the meteor? Share your images with CNN iReport.
Moscow (CNN) -- A meteor streaked through the skies above Russia's Urals region Friday morning, before exploding with a flash and boom that shattered glass in buildings and left about 1,000 people hurt, state media said.

The number of injured has continued to rise through the day as new reports come in from across a swath of central Russia.

As of late afternoon local time, the Interior Ministry said about 1,000 people had been hurt, including more than 200 children, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency said.
Most of those hurt are in the Chelyabinsk region, the news agency said. The vast majority of injuries are not thought to be serious.

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About 3,000 buildings have sustained damage -- mostly broken glass -- as a result of the shock waves caused by the blast, the news agency reported.
Vladimir Stepanov, of the National Center for Emergency Situations at the Russian Interior Ministry, earlier told state media that hospitals, kindergartens and schools were among those affected.

About 20,000 emergency response workers have been mobilized, RIA Novosti reported.

Read more: Saving Earth from asteroids
Amateur video footage showed a bright white streak moving rapidly across the sky, before exploding with an even brighter flash and a deafening bang.
The explosion occurred about 9:20 a.m. local time, as many people were out and about.

CNN iReporter and Instagram user Max Chuykov saw the meteor trail from the city of Yekaterinburg. He shared on Instagram that it was "close to the ground."
Witness Ekaterina Shlygina posted to CNN iReport andwrote on Instagram: "Upon Chelyabinsk a huge fireball has exploded. It wasn't an aircraft."

The national space agency, Roscosmos, said scientists believed one meteoroid had entered the atmosphere, where it burned and disintegrated into fragments, according to RIA Novosti.

Read more: When the Quadrantid meteor shower hit its peak
The resulting meteorites are believed to be scattered across three regions of Russia, one of them Chelyabinsk, as well as neighboring Kazakhstan, the news agency said.
One large chunk was discovered in a lake in the Chelyabinsk region, RIA Novosti cited the Chelyabinsk governor as saying.

A spokesman for the Emergency Ministry for the Chelyabinsk region told CNN earlier Friday that 524 people there were injured and 34 hospitalized.

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NASA estimates 4,700 'potentially hazardous' asteroids

For sky watchers, the reports bring to mind the famous Tunguska event of 1908 in remote Siberia, in which an asteroid entered the atmosphere and exploded, leveling trees over an area of 820 square miles -- about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island.
About 80 million trees were felled, radiating out from the center of the blast, but no crater was left.

Friday's Chelyabinsk meteor comes on the same day that a hefty asteroid is due to charge past Earth at a pretty close range, in space terms.

An asteroid is coming. Fear not, scientists say

Known as 2012 DA14, the asteroid is thought to be 45 meters long, about half the length of a football field.

But scientists say it will come no closer than 17,100 miles from our planet's surface.

Photos: All about asteroids


Your photos: Orionid meteor shower

"No Earth impact is possible," according to Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Those in Eastern Europe, Asia or Australia will get the best telescope-aided view, scientists said. The asteroid won't be visible to the naked eye.

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.

"This kind of object does fall fairly frequently, but when they fall into the ocean or desert, there is no impact on people -- so this one is unusual in the sense that it's come over a populated area."

Cole said he wasn't aware if scientists had foreseen the meteor's entry into the atmosphere.

Because meteoroids are smaller than asteroids or comets, they are hard to spot and there is often little warning that they are heading toward Earth, he said.

Colin Stuart, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in London, said the asteroid's flyby Friday was a chance for experts to get an unusually close-up look and learn more.

"Scientists are going to fire radar beams off of the asteroid, trying to get an idea what it's made of and the how it's moving, so that in the future, if there's something that's a bit more of a threat to us, we have the best knowledge of what we are dealing with," Stuart said.

The asteroid, which is not connected to the Russian meteor, is not expected to hit any of the communications satellites it will pass on its trajectory, he said.

[notorious]

Earth collision experts just jizzed because their grants are going to get a healthy increase.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by notorious

Earth collision experts just jizzed because their grants are going to get a healthy increase.

Yeah no kidding. And absolutely perfect timing with the NEA that's going to whiz by Earth today. And it's estimated at 190,000 tons, compared to this measly little 10 ton one that hit Russia here.

It's still sad though, that it takes something like this actually hitting the Earth before people give 2 shits about it.

[notorious]

Originally Posted by Fish

Yeah no kidding. And absolutely perfect timing with the NEA that's going to whiz by Earth today. And it's estimated at 190,000 tons, compared to this measly little 10 ton one that hit Russia here.

It's still sad though, that it takes something like this actually hitting the Earth before people give 2 shits about it.

Meh, it's just the entire human race at stake. Nobody give a shit as long as their favorite reality show is still on.

[spanky 52]

That would be some scary shit to see one like this. And damn Russia is big.

[Rausch]

So when they say "there's no risk of CR12-471 hitting us" they really do mean US...

[The Franchise]

That wasn't a meteor.

[ForeverChiefs58]

Asteroid will buzz Earth, miss by 17,150 miles


This image provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech shows a simulation of asteroid 2012 DA14 approaching from the south as it passes through the Earth-moon system on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. The 150-foot object will pass within 17,000 miles of the Earth. NASA scientists insist there is absolutely no chance of a collision as it passes.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A 150-foot asteroid hurtled toward Earth's backyard,
destined Friday to make the closest known flyby for a rock of its size.

NASA promised the asteroid would miss Earth by 17,150 miles, avoiding catastrophe. But that's still closer than many communication and weather satellites; scientists insisted these, too, would be spared.

Asteroid 2012 DA14, as it's called, is too small to see with the naked eye even at its closest approach around 2:25 p.m. EST, over the Indian Ocean near Sumatra.

The best viewing locations, with binoculars and telescopes, are in Asia, Australia and eastern Europe. Even there, all anyone can see is a pinpoint of light as the asteroid zooms by at 17,400 mph.

As asteroids go, DA14 is a shrimp. The one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was 6 miles across. But this rock could still do immense damage if it struck, releasing the energy equivalent of 2.4 million tons of TNT and wiping out 750 square miles.

Scientists are certain it won't impact Earth. And chances are extremely remote it will run into any of the satellites orbiting 22,300 miles up.

Most of the solar system's asteroids are situated in a belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and remain stable there for billions of years. Some occasionally pop out, though, into Earth's neighborhood.

The flyby provides a rare learning opportunity for scientists eager to keep future asteroids at bay — and a prime-time advertisement for those anxious to step up preventive measures.

"We are in a shooting gallery and this is graphic evidence of it," said former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman emeritus of the B612 Foundation, committed to protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids.

Schweickart noted that 500,000 to 1 million sizable near-Earth objects — asteroids or comets — are out there. Yet less than 1 percent — fewer than 10,000 — have been inventoried.

Humanity has to do better, he said. The foundation is working to build and launch an infrared space telescope to find and track threatening asteroids.

DA14 — discovered by Spanish astronomers last February — is "such a close call" that it is a "celestial torpedo across the bow of spaceship Earth," Schweickart said in a phone interview Thursday.

Astronomers organized asteroid-encounter parties for Friday and experts just about everywhere were giving flyby rundowns.

NASA's deep-space antenna in California's Mojave Desert was ready to collect radar images, but not until eight hours after the closest approach given the United States' poor positioning for the big event.

Scientists at NASA's Near-Earth Object program at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory estimate that an object of this size makes a close approach like this every 40 years. The likelihood of a strike is every 1,200 years.

If a killer asteroid was, indeed, incoming, a spacecraft could be launched to nudge the asteroid out of Earth's way, changing its speed and the point of intersection. A second spacecraft would make a slight alteration in the path of the asteroid and ensure it never intersects with the planet again, Schweickart said.

Of course, this is all in theory.

Forget an asteroid blowup like the one depicted in the 1998 film "Armageddon." The last thing Earth needs is asteroid fragments raining down.

"Thanks, Hollywood," Schweickart said with a laugh.

http://weather.yahoo.com/asteroid-bu...095504252.html

[KChiefer]

Guile brought the SONIC BOOM!!!

[saphojunkie]

Okay, let's update the list:

WHAT WILL HAPPEN FIRST?

A) BLACK PRESIDENT
B) POT LEGALIZED
C) METEOR STRIKES EARTH
D) CHIEFS SELECT FIRST ROUND QUARTERBACK
E) ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

Okay, let's update the list:

WHAT WILL HAPPEN FIRST?

A) BLACK PRESIDENT
B) POT LEGALIZED
C) METEOR STRIKES EARTH
D) CHIEFS SELECT FIRST ROUND QUARTERBACK
E) ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

Classic!

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by saphojunkie

Okay, let's update the list:

WHAT WILL HAPPEN FIRST?

A) BLACK PRESIDENT
B) POT LEGALIZED
C) METEOR STRIKES EARTH
D) CHIEFS SELECT FIRST ROUND QUARTERBACK
E) ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

So next up is either a quarterback or a zombie apocalypse? I sure hope we draft Geno.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

So next up is either a quarterback or a zombie apocalypse? I sure hope we draft Geno.

If I were you I'd install some gun turrets on that apricot sex magnet...