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Russian Meteor’s Origin Remains Mysterious 2 Years Later
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| Trail of the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013. Credit: Alex Alishevskikh CC BY-SA 2.0 |
Two years after an asteroid exploded over Russia and injured more than 1,200 people, the origin of the space rock still puzzles scientists.
The 66-foot-wide (20 meters) asteroid broke up over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013, shattering windows across the area and sending many people to the hospital with lacerations from the flying glass.
Originally, astronomers thought that the Chelyabinsk meteor came from a 1.24-mile-wide (2 kilometers) near-Earth asteroid called 1999 NC43. But a closer look at the asteroid’s orbit and likely mineral composition, gained from spectroscopy, suggests few similarities between it
and the Russian meteor. [Meteor Streaks Over Russia, Explodes (Photos)]
These two bodies shared similar orbits around the sun, and initial studies suggested even similar compositions,” lead study author Vishnu Reddy, a scientist with the nonprofit Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona,said in a statement.
However, “the composition of [the] Chelyabinsk meteorite that was recovered after the event is similar to a common type of meteorite called LL chondrites,” he added. “The near-Earth asteroid has a composition that is distinctly different from this.”
More generally, Reddy and his colleagues’ work showed that it is difficult to make predictions about what particular asteroid could have shed pieces that slammed into Earth. Because most asteroids are so small and their orbits are “chaotic,” it’s hard to make a firm link, the authors said.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2015/02/russian-meteors-origin-remains-mysterious-2-years-later/
