Why is it that the Russians get all the good meterorites? Are meterorites attracked to vodka?
The 400 injured seems to be a bit of a media created buzz. In the middle of a Russian winter, in the middle of nowhere, this must be the greatest thing since Putin.
I have meen trying to determine if the Chelyabinsk, Russia meteorite was related to the DA14 asteroid.
Apparently its not.
The apparent motion of DA14 is generally from South to North.
There's a weather satellite image of the meteorite trail.
Look up a google map for "Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia".
Move out a bit so the geographic boarder matches that on the satellite image.
This trail looks like it goes from NorthEast to SouthWest.
So my conclusion is their not related orbitally.
A couple of years ago I was driving down the motorway on my way home, It was dark and just as I drove past a clearing there was a big light in the sky, I thought it might be a plane on it's way to heathrow next thing it shot off at high speed alongside the car and left a stream behind it then it started to breakup into pieces, really spectacular to watch, seconds later it was gone. Just wish I'd had the windscreen camera I now have then.
The scary part of this is that there wasn't a forecast made head of time which came from tracking the object. We are woefully behind in this.. Don't tell me that it can't be done. We track all kinds of weather right now.
Check NASA's site for Near Earth Objects http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html. I once heard that there were hundreds of near Earth objects (NEOs) and we only track about 10% of them!
Don't tell me that it can't be done. We track all kinds of weather right now.
I'm not going to say it cannot be done but clearly there a difference between observing the weather, which all happens in a few km thick skin of atmosphere around the earth, and spotting little rocks circulating in bilions of cubic km of space. Space is rather big by comparison to the atmosphere.
Space is rather big by comparison to the atmosphere.
Yup.
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The scary part of this is that there wasn't a forecast made head of time which came from tracking the object. We are woefully behind in this.. Don't tell me that it can't be done. We track all kinds of weather right now.
This one was relatively small, but I am sure they will be now be scrambling to use it as a "calibration point" for what they DO try and track.
As real damage goes, this was minor.
I have meen trying to determine if the Chelyabinsk, Russia meteorite was related to the DA14 asteroid.
Apparently its not.
The apparent motion of DA14 is generally from South to North.
There's a weather satellite image of the meteorite trail.
Look up a google map for "Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia".
Move out a bit so the geographic boarder matches that on the satellite image.
This trail looks like it goes from NorthEast to SouthWest.
So my conclusion is their not related orbitally.
Duane J
And so Banana Theorist (Everything comes in bunches) have nothing to exploit.
Actually I was wondering the same thing. After all, we have been told of meteor showers for ages.
Live an learn. I now know that when I see a metorite in a window, duck for cover. And if the tide goes way out, head for high ground. To survive mother nature, I always thought it was just enough to get out of a thunderstorm.
It appears to have been around 15 meters diameter (one Nasa source estimated 15-17m), another source says it may have been an iron meteorite (not confirmed), and a third source estimated it to be 10 tonnes (relayed via BBC but unconfirmed).
Anyway the explosion was several kilotons. Largest hit since Tunguska 1908. And arriving from the direction of the sun, very difficult to spot.
I was waiting for the 2012 DA14 rock to be visible last night, it was expected to rise above the mountains a few minutes before nine pm, right left to the Leo constellation. But the sky went from clear to cloudy in just a few minutes before the passing meteorite so I missed the whole show. Had to watch live stream from an Australian observatory instead.
There's a rule to learn from watching meteors. Depending on the point of observation and the time, a meteor may come in directly at the observer or create long glancing trails. In time exposures, the head on meteors can actually appear as dots looking like stars. If these are big, they can reach the earth as meteorites. In the case of large ones, it's best they burn up across the atmosphere.
Of course space being so big and us being so small has it's benefits. It means there is a lot less chance of this stuff actually hitting us.
Technically that's true, but the reality is just considering the asteroid belt and the ORT cloud, any chunk of rock could break orbit and take on a path to hit the Earth without any prediction of the event. Coupled to this fact, the Solar System is also traveling through space and can attract and capture rogue asteroids which can also impact the Earth. The large number of big rocks that have passed the Earth in the past several decades, at near miss distances (roughly Earth-Moon distance, more or less) should be a wake-up call for the human race.
The near-miss asteroid that passed by Friday was expected to fly lower than many of the artificial satellites in orbit. But the experts said it was just going to be a miss.
So we have a bit of drama. This is certainly far less that moon-earth distances.
I hope I haven't worried youall. Get in touch with your 'inner Chicken Little'.
I have meen trying to determine if the Chelyabinsk, Russia meteorite was related to the DA14 asteroid.
Apparently its not....
I've often wondered about this sort of thing: what if one of a group of small asteroids hits the moon and knocks some cheese into earth's orbit? Is it possible for the cheese to come down in a trajectory different from the parent group? Or is this possibility full of holes?
I've often wondered about this sort of thing: what if one of a group of small asteroids hits the moon and knocks some cheese into earth's orbit? Is it possible for the cheese to come down in a trajectory different from the parent group? Or is this possibility full of holes?
That's a bit of a different question.
If the Russian rock broke of DA12 its new orbit would be very similar to the parent.
Now if it were truly blasted off, probably eons ago, the new orbit could be quite different. However, the several objects can be tracked back to the common point where the collision occurred. There are a number of asteroid families such as the Baptistina group. These all have similar orbit inclinations and momentums since they were most likely from a big collision long ago.
The longer time passes these families get more dispersed until they get unrecognizable.
Here we are with a long anticipate 45 meter meterorite arriving on schedule, and out of the blue comes a 15 meter meterorite that scares the daylights out of us.
I wonder why we missed the 15 meter one that really did hit earth. Good or bad criteria?
Here we are with a long anticipate 45 meter meteorite arriving on schedule, and out of the blue comes a 15 meter meteorite that scares the daylights out of us.
I wonder why we missed the 15 meter one that really did hit earth. Good or bad criteria?
DA12 was barely detected last year only because it passed by so closely.
A 10m or 15m object is probably under the detection limit even if it did pass close by.
And certainly not when far away.
I've often wondered about this sort of thing: what if one of a group of small asteroids hits the moon and knocks some cheese into earth's orbit? Is it possible for the cheese to come down in a trajectory different from the parent group? Or is this possibility full of holes?
Yes, In the case of stuff from Mars, exactly that happened, and the stuff was blasted out of Mars orbit and found its way onto the earth in the form of meteorites. It also led to the life controversy when small fossils were found in the rock.
It appears to have been around 15 meters diameter (one Nasa source estimated 15-17m), another source says it may have been an iron meteorite (not confirmed), and a third source estimated it to be 10 tonnes (relayed via BBC but unconfirmed).
Anyway the explosion was several kilotons. Largest hit since Tunguska 1908. And arriving from the direction of the sun, very difficult to spot.
Its not clear there was any definite explosion at all from the footage I've seen, the damage is consistent with a sonic boom IMO - remember these things literally
cut a hole through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds (Mach 44 initially!) and melt/ablate into a trail of super-hot plasma. A detonation would have
stopped it dead(*) with a big flash (a soft comet would be more likely to do this than a hard iron meterite). The footage shows it flaring up and brightening
a lot, but over several seconds, then fading back down to a much less bright blob still travelling fast - presumably large amounts of it were vaporising
and creating an intense fireball but not really an "airburst" - perhaps it shed lots of pieces that each burnt up and the largest piece carried on?
Since the boom and messy disintegration spreads the energy along a trail the local damage was probably a lot less than a single detonation of the same energy.
This is much smaller than the Tunguska one which was comparable to an H-bomb and estimated as 100m diameter (200 times the volume). I wouldn't want to
be near one any bigger than this recent one though
And yes a 15m object coming towards you at Mach 44 is incredibly hard to spot even minutes before it arrives! But the 15m objects don't pose such a great
risk - the asteroid that missed earth the same day is the sort of thing to worry about.
NWCCTV
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The 400 injured seems to be a bit of a media created buzz. In the middle of a Russian winter, in the middle of nowhere, this must be the greatest thing since Putin.
@
Apparently its not.
The apparent motion of DA14 is generally from South to North.
There's a weather satellite image of the meteorite trail.
Look up a google map for "Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia".
Move out a bit so the geographic boarder matches that on the satellite image.
This trail looks like it goes from NorthEast to SouthWest.
So my conclusion is their not related orbitally.
Duane J
Big, wide target. I'm definitely going on a diet.
Jeff
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21442863
Yup.
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
This one was relatively small, but I am sure they will be now be scrambling to use it as a "calibration point" for what they DO try and track.
As real damage goes, this was minor.
And so Banana Theorist (Everything comes in bunches) have nothing to exploit.
Actually I was wondering the same thing. After all, we have been told of meteor showers for ages.
Live an learn. I now know that when I see a metorite in a window, duck for cover. And if the tide goes way out, head for high ground. To survive mother nature, I always thought it was just enough to get out of a thunderstorm.
Anyway the explosion was several kilotons. Largest hit since Tunguska 1908. And arriving from the direction of the sun, very difficult to spot.
Ha, yes. I was uing a bit of British understatement, wouldn't want to frighten anybody:)
Of course space being so big and us being so small has it's benefits. It means there is a lot less chance of this stuff actually hitting us.
So we have a bit of drama. This is certainly far less that moon-earth distances.
I hope I haven't worried youall. Get in touch with your 'inner Chicken Little'.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21442863
I've often wondered about this sort of thing: what if one of a group of small asteroids hits the moon and knocks some cheese into earth's orbit? Is it possible for the cheese to come down in a trajectory different from the parent group? Or is this possibility full of holes?
If the Russian rock broke of DA12 its new orbit would be very similar to the parent.
Now if it were truly blasted off, probably eons ago, the new orbit could be quite different. However, the several objects can be tracked back to the common point where the collision occurred. There are a number of asteroid families such as the Baptistina group. These all have similar orbit inclinations and momentums since they were most likely from a big collision long ago.
The longer time passes these families get more dispersed until they get unrecognizable.
Duane J
I wonder why we missed the 15 meter one that really did hit earth. Good or bad criteria?
My family is just like that.
A 10m or 15m object is probably under the detection limit even if it did pass close by.
And certainly not when far away.
Duane J
Its not clear there was any definite explosion at all from the footage I've seen, the damage is consistent with a sonic boom IMO - remember these things literally
cut a hole through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds (Mach 44 initially!) and melt/ablate into a trail of super-hot plasma. A detonation would have
stopped it dead(*) with a big flash (a soft comet would be more likely to do this than a hard iron meterite). The footage shows it flaring up and brightening
a lot, but over several seconds, then fading back down to a much less bright blob still travelling fast - presumably large amounts of it were vaporising
and creating an intense fireball but not really an "airburst" - perhaps it shed lots of pieces that each burnt up and the largest piece carried on?
Since the boom and messy disintegration spreads the energy along a trail the local damage was probably a lot less than a single detonation of the same energy.
This is much smaller than the Tunguska one which was comparable to an H-bomb and estimated as 100m diameter (200 times the volume). I wouldn't want to
be near one any bigger than this recent one though
And yes a 15m object coming towards you at Mach 44 is incredibly hard to spot even minutes before it arrives! But the 15m objects don't pose such a great
risk - the asteroid that missed earth the same day is the sort of thing to worry about.
(*) relatively speaking