A plunging meteor which exploded with a blinding flash above
central Russia, set off a shockwave that shattered windows and hurt almost 1,000
people in an event unprecedented in modern times.
Experts insisted the meteor's fiery entry into the atmosphere on Friday was
not linked to the asteroid 2012 DA 14, which later passed about 17,200 miles
(27,700 kilometres) above the Earth without incident in an unusually close
approach.
But the extraordinary event brought morning traffic to a sudden halt in the
Urals city of Chelyabinsk as shocked drivers stopped to watch the falling meteor
partially burning up in the lower atmosphere and light up the sky. The fall of such a large meteor estimated as weighing an unspecified but probably dozens of tons was
extremely rare, while the number of casualties as a consequence of its burning
up around a heavily-inhabited area was unprecedented.
Chelyabinsk regional governor Mikhail Yurevich, quoted by the RIA Novosti
news agency, said 950 people were injured, with two-thirds of the injuries light
wounds from glass shards and other materials blown out by the shockwave. Windows were shattered by the shockwave across the city's region with the
ministry saying almost 300 buildings were damaged including schools, hospitals,
a zinc factory and even an ice hockey stadium.
"At 9:20 am, an object was observed above Chelyabinsk which flew
by at great speed and left a trail behind. Within two minutes there were two
bangs," regional emergencies official Yuri Burenko said in a statement. The office of the local governor said that a meteorite had fallen into a lake
outside the town of Chebarkul in the Chelyabinsk region and television images
pointed to a six-metre (20-foot) hole in the frozen lake's ice. However it has yet to be finally confirmed if meteorite fragments made
contact with the Earth and there were no reports that any locals had been hurt
directly by a falling piece of meteorite.
Schools were closed for the day and theatre shows cancelled across the region
after the shock wave blew out windows amid temperatures as low as minus 18
degrees Celsius (zero degrees Fahrenheit).
"Thank God that nothing fell onto inhabited areas," President Vladimir Putin
said in a meeting with Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov, ordering him to
look into how to warn citizens about such events.
The Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement that it estimated the
body to be several metres long and weighing several dozen tons. "It burned up
at a height of 30-50 kilometres... but pieces could have fallen to Earth as
meteorites." The meteor explosion appears to be one of the most stunning cosmic events
above Russia since the 1908 Tunguska Event, when a massive blast most scientists
blame on an asteroid or a comet impact ripped through Siberia.
Live images from a telescope at the Gingin Observatory in western Australia
showed the asteroid looking like a white streak.The time of closest approach was about 2:25
pm EST (1925 GMT), said the US space agency NASA, which had called the event
"the closest-ever predicted approach to Earth for an object this large." NASA estimates an asteroid such as 2012 DA 14 flies close to Earth every 40
years on average, but only hits our planet once every 1,200 years.
Paul Chodas, a research scientist in the Near Earth Object Program Office at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, called the
meteor-asteroid combination an "incredible coincidence." Chodas said it was "virtually impossible" to spot objects such as the meteor
that struck Russia, which he called a "tiny asteroid", ahead of time against a
daytime sky.
The Chelyabinsk region is Russia's industrial heartland, filled with
smoke-chugging factories and other huge facilities that include a nuclear power
plant and the massive Mayak atomic waste storage and treatment centre.
A spokesman for Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy state corporation, said
that its operations remained unaffected. The emergencies ministry said radiation levels in the region also did not
change and that 20,000 rescue workers had been dispatched to help the injured
and locate those requiring help.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Through this ever open gate
None come too early
None too late
Thanks for dropping in ... the PICs