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Meteor impact in Russia gains worldwide attention |
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Friday, 15 February 2013 15:55 |
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An unusual event has put more than 40 people in the hospital and injured more than 1,000 in Russia. According to astrophysicists, the injuries were caused by the explosion of a meteor as it slammed into the atmosphere over Russia early Friday morning.
Black Hills Fox Reporter Al Van Zee talked with a local expert on space. For the people in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, their first experience with the strange event was a bright flash in the sky, caught by dozens of cell-phone, and dashboard cameras. Many people, who had just arrived at work, went to the windows to investigate bright flash. And it was then that the exploding meteor blew the windows out of thousands of structures. Most of the people injured were injured by flying glass. The shockwave collapsed the roof and wall of at least one building in the city of one million people. Tom Durkin, with the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium, says the object was probably about the size of a bus. Tom Durkin says, "Many of the meteors burn up in the atmosphere. The particular one in Russia today was big enough not to burn up. And there were pieces of it that, of course, broke apart as it was exploding in the atmosphere that hit the ground. And they'll be collecting those pieces." Durkin says the surviving pieces of the meteor, called meteorites may look similar to these pieces that were recovered from another meteor impact, also in Russia. NASA estimates the speed of the meteor was about 40 thousand miles per hour when it hit the atmosphere. It was about twenty miles above the surface when it exploded with an intensity that was briefly brighter than the sun. Al Van Zee, Black Hills Fox News. |
