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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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Feb 15, 2013 - 03:40pm PT
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i like how the contrail looks twin-engined
Paul at bad astronomy said that indicates the mass split. Hence the two contrails.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Feb 15, 2013 - 03:54pm PT
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Alexey
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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Feb 15, 2013 - 04:20pm PT
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Russian Post Service - Delivered
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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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Feb 15, 2013 - 05:18pm PT
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Klimmer that weather report is classic!!
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dave729
Trad climber
Western America
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Feb 15, 2013 - 05:21pm PT
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Until further notice by the government speed of sound is still way less than the speed of light. Takes couple of minutes for meteor sonic boom to travel 50miles down to frozen Russia. Ref lightning flashes and waiting for the boom sort of delay thingie.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Feb 15, 2013 - 06:19pm PT
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I wonder why Russia and not, say, The Netherlands? Could it be that God hates Russians as much or even more than homosexuals? I turn to Pat Robertson for questions of this nature.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Feb 16, 2013 - 02:56am PT
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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.
Crazy. I spent a month in these two particular cities. I also spent time in Port-au-Prince just before it was shook up.
Gotta stay home!
Zlatoust is an intersting place. Every day people would be hung somewhere interesting, from the top of the ferris wheel stood out the most to me. They also have a big military weapons factory there that they tried to keep a secret until the late 90's. The whole city had just one lonely highway leading to it - really creepy place overall!
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hb81
climber
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Feb 16, 2013 - 04:46am PT
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Can someone explain the physics of why such an object would "detonate" so violently that windows and solid doors blow out on earth? Why doesn't it just fall apart?
Was the shock wave from entering the atmosphere or from impact?
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Feb 16, 2013 - 05:01am PT
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The shock wave was more like the wave coming off the bow of a speeding boat. A boat going 30kilometers/second.
As long as there is atmosphere, so once it does enter the atmosphere, there is matter (atmosphere) to displace. The displacement creates a wave that travels at the speed of sound.
Hitting the ground at that speed made a boom too.
So the windows that were broken would be in a shape similar to a lollipop. The handle/stick part is the result of the travel through the air, the candy on the end part the result of coming to a quick stop on the ground.
Once the stone broke up (similar to the space shuttle when it lost it's tiles) the pieces started acting independently and burning up at different rates because they were different sizes.
The object didn't fall and then explode like a bomb. It the friction between it and air got more intense as it got down into thicker air, which meant it burned up mostly before hitting the ground. Notice how all the news reports are of the estimated mass before entering the atmosphere. Most of that burned off before hitting the ground. The energy dispersed during this process in sound was what broke the windows. Kinda like the energy dispersed while you burn a campfire is mostly radiating heat, some light, and very little crackling sound. This was a lot of light, a lot of heat, and a lot of sound!
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hb81
climber
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Feb 16, 2013 - 05:28am PT
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Hey, thanks for the explanation.
From another post:
Estimated at about 10 tons, and about 2 meters across,
So this was just a tiny boulder that did all that damage... imagine something 20 meters across or even larger... pretty scary stuff.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 16, 2013 - 10:46am PT
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I've read about nuclear weapons design and testing. One of the main things that they measure is the pressure of the shockwave. I was amazed at how low the pressure was to blow a building to shreds. I think that it was less than 10 psia.
When some of us old bastards were kids, the military used to send sonic booms down over the country pretty regularly. A sonic boom can shatter windows, too. That is a ten ton or so jet going 1000mph. This was a ten ton object doing 30km per second.
Somebody else do the math, and I'm sure that that isn't the best answer..but it is close.
The meteroite also had a very shallow trajectory. It didn't come straight down. It was at a shallow angle.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Feb 16, 2013 - 11:47am PT
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More information has been gathered and this thing was pretty damn big. Not only was energy released from breaking the sound barrier it also exploded. Fortunately it was quite high when it did so or it could have flattened a city. Not just a few roofs, doors and windows. It was about 1/3 the diameter of the one that passed by a few hours later.
NASA http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130215.html
The estimated size of the object, prior to entering Earth's atmosphere, has been revised upward from 49 feet (15 meters) to 55 feet (17 meters), and its estimated mass has increased from 7,000 to 10,000 tons. Also, the estimate for energy released during the event has increased by 30 kilotons to nearly 500 kilotons of energy released.
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That's the energy of a pretty decent H-Bomb fortunately without the radioactive fallout.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Feb 16, 2013 - 12:23pm PT
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The data, right now, still seems all over the place. e.g., from 10T to 70,000 T. Quite a range there.
.....
According to the Planetary Society (yeah, I'm a member) ... The Russian meteor was not detected from Earth because it came from the daylight side (i.e. from the sun's direction). Seems like a gap to fill.**
** A 3-6 month blind spot (for earth bound teles). On top of everything else.
.....
A remaining question I have is why did this meteor come in at such a very shallow angle (relative to our atmosphere, almost skipping along it, which is veneer thin)? Coincidence?
We could call it... The Russian Tangent. Or perhaps better, the Chelyabinsk Tangent. :)
QT What per cent drop in on a tangent? Less than 1 per cent? Less than .1 per cent? (Review the most pop Russian video. It's pretty clear I think that this meteor threaded our veneer thin atmosphere in a very tangential angle.)
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 16, 2013 - 12:36pm PT
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And in answer to my wife's question of why so many meteorites seem to hit
Russia I was like "Duh, it's because they deserve it!"
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Feb 16, 2013 - 12:37pm PT
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What's the largest nation, by size, in the world?
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 16, 2013 - 12:41pm PT
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1.8 times the size of the USA.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Feb 16, 2013 - 12:42pm PT
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It is normal for initial reports of something like this to be of very mixed accuracy.
It is also normal as time goes on for the experts to dial in much more accurately.
If you want good information about any subject look to the experts. The various space and defence agencies are generally reliable and tend to not only give the best analysis they will usually let you know how certain they are of their information.
Currently what I posted is the best info I could find and the adjustments being made are getting smaller ie accuracy is getting dialed in pretty close now.
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A little geometry will show that if randomly shooting at spherical object with tiny bullets you are much less likely to get a perpendicular trajectory than a low angled one. Add in the effect of gravity to guide objects that would otherwise miss into glancing blow trajectories and the liklyhood of low angle hits gets even higher.
SO basically if a meteorite is going to hit a nation on earth it is most likely to hit Russia at fairly low angle. Funny enough that's exactly what happened.
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YosemiteSteve
Trad climber
CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 16, 2013 - 12:47pm PT
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A remaining question I have is why did this meteor come in at such a very shallow angle (relative to our atmosphere, almost skipping along it, which is veneer thin)? Coincidence?
I think most these objects get pulled into the Earth, as opposed to falling straight into it, so it's kinda falling out of orbit. Some meteors even skip on the atmosphere, complete another Earth orbit and then finally crash to the ground.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Feb 16, 2013 - 12:47pm PT
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1.8 times the size of the USA.
Mine was a tongue in cheek question.
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