Today in Space Jams: a meteor danced its way across the azure skies of Central Russia overnight, taking leave from its wearisome journey through the universe from God-who-knows-where and landing with a sonic boom in the Chelyabinsk region near the Ural Mountains. Taking in a whirlwind six city tour of destruction before making its society debut as a meteorite debutante, The Rock has thoughtlessly injured more than 1200 people (200 of them children), hospitalised 110 and blown the minds of Everyone, everywhere.
Also, in unrelated space news a completely separate “small” asteroid, 2012 DA14, stopped by Earth on its merry way through the cosmos and came within 17,200 miles of our pithy planet, which is closer than most artificial satellites bother to get; close enough to say ‘Hi!’ but not so close that you have to have to stick around and make awkward small talk. A Heavenly coincidence.
UPDATE 1: Here is a neat photo taken using a 3″ refractor equipped with a colour CCD camera at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia [that’s us!] which shows asteroid 2012 DA14 and the Eta Carinae Nebula, with the white box highlighting the asteroid’s path.
UPDATE 2: Here is a kool GIF you can save and file under ‘What the end of the world will look like; subheadings: hawt, fiery, Melancholia.‘
The meteorite is thought to have landed in a frozen lake that has since been sealed off by police while a search team (probably lead by Putin, naked) eagerly await their arctic plunge into the icy depths of The Unknown. Most of the injuries sustained in this golden shower of science appear to have been caused by flying glass, debris and crippled communications networks. A reported 20,000 people and several aircraft have been dispatched to collect the scorching extraterrestrial shards, because collecting fragments of cosmic space debris = best field trip ever.
There are a staggering number of videos doing the rounds (some of which you can see below) caught on dashboard-mounted cameras. An estimated one million Russians have cameras installed in their cars, reportedly to capture and stamp out police corruption; also because, as a friend tells me, you often do your best singing in the car when no one is around to see it, so why not capture it to share later on?
The visiting hunk of burning space love is thought to weigh some 10 tons and entered our fragile atmosphere at a speed of at least 54,000 kph, creating a sonic blast akin to an atomic explosion that shattered both the glass of all the buildings in its impact zone and the very fabric of existence for whoever still believes that Our Lives on this planet actually mean something, anything.
Apparently meteoroids [pre-atmospheric entry], meteors [upon entry] and meteorites [upon impact] are quite common and meteorite strikes take place around five or ten times annually, with larger-scale space attacks like this one only occurring once every five years.
The more you know. Ypa!
Photo by AP
via The Guardian
