Giant meteorite fireball hits Russia!

Do all Russians drive around recording their daily routes? Or maybe these were police or other official vehicles that are required to record?

Do all Russians drive around recording their daily routes?

My question is; would the government or the scientist really tell us the truth if an asteroid was about to hit the earth,
or would they fudge a little to keep the worldwide panic down?

Revelation 8:1-10 (KJV)

[1] And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
[2] And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.
[3] And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
[4] And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.
[5] And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.
[6] And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.
[7] The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
[8] And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
[9] And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.
[10] And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
[11] And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
[12] And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.
[13] And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!

Hi there -

You may have heard of the meteorite that struck the Russian Chelyabinsk region at about 09:15 local time in the region about 1,500 km (930 miles) east of Moscow in the Ural mountains. The damage caused by the shock wave has been extensive. As reports continue to stream in, the number of people injured has been increasingly steadily and nears 1,000, mostly caused by window glass blown out by the shockwave. The amateur videos and pictures illustrate the power that a small object entering the atmosphere at high speed can have.

Estimated at about 10 tons, and about 2 meters across, this object (called a bolide when they are this bright) streaked through the sky at a speed of 54,000 kph (33,000 mph), and due to the extreme forces of atmospheric entry, broke apart between 30-50 km (18-32 miles) above the ground. Despite the coincident timing, the Russian meteorite has nothing to do with 2012 DA14, as the objects have decidedly different trajectories. A fragment from 2012 DA14 would have been moving from south to north, the path of the meteorite is from northeast to southwest. We will certainly learn more about the nature of this object when fragments from it are recovered and studied in laboratories.

In our previous update, we mentioned that many asteroids pass by Earth with little or no warning. We were not exaggerating. Despite considerable progress in asteroid detection, only about one in ten close-approaching asteroids are known about ahead of time. While not every approaching asteroid may be detected, and with little warning not all can be prevented, in this case a little warning would have prevented many injuries, and quelled the panic that followed.

Today's events, both with 2012 DA14 and the Russian meteorite, are a reminder that our Solar System is a crowded place. Today was unnerving indeed, and scary and unfortunate for those near Chelyabinsk. We don’t know when the next one of these might appear, but we’re working to see it coming!

Be sure to watch the many live events going on today as 2012 DA14 safely passes by, and take the opportunity to learn more about these asteroids that are potentially hazardous, but potentially rich reserves of resources for our future prosperity on Earth and in space.

-Chris Lewicki
President & Chief Asteroid Miner

i like how the contrail looks twin-engined

Army units found three meteorite debris impact sites, two of which are in an area near Chebarkul Lake, west of Chelyabinsk. The third site was found some 80 kilometers further to the northwest, near the town of Zlatoust.

Estimated at about 10 tons, and about 2 meters across,

1.8 times the size of the USA.

These new estimates were generated using new data that had been collected by five additional infrasound stations located around the world

Yeah, that's interesting. I hope the experts get around to talking about this somewhere. Who's to say this Russian meteor wasn't captured by earth and was for some time in an earth orbit instead of a solar orbit? Then an earth orbit decay would explain the "veneer-approach" entry. Right?

Russian Fireball Highlights Asteroid Threat, Lawmaker Says

http://www.space.com/19833-russia-meteor-asteroid-threat.html

Russian scientists say the meteor weighed about 10 tonnes before it entered the Earth's atmosphere, travelling at some 30km (19 miles) per second, before breaking apart 30-50km (20-30 miles) above ground.

However, the US space agency Nasa said the meteor was 17m (55ft) wide and weighed 10,000 tonnes before entering the atmosphere, releasing about 500 kilotons of energy. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was 12-15 kilotons.

They decided to tackle the problem with brute computational force, running simulations of billions of possible orbits to find the ones most likely to have led to a collision. They then used the average of the ten best orbits to search a NASA asteroid catalogue for known objects on similar paths. They found about 20, ranging in size from 5 to 200 metres across, they report in an article to be published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters1.

......


The best sibling candidate, for instance, is a 200-metre-wide asteroid known as 2011 EO40, whose orbit was calculated from observations taken over just 34 days. That is too short a time to be able to pinpoint its position in the future, says Jon Giorgini, a senior analyst in the Solar System Dynamics Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. For that, researchers would need observations taken over the asteroid's two-year orbit, he says.


.........


The only way to prove a connection would be to collect samples from one of the proposed family members and compare them with meteorites collected from the Chelyabinsk region, says Carlos de la Fuente Marcos. However, a cheaper way to find out whether the suspected siblings have at least a passing resemblance could be to measure their composition from their light spectra.