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Another Devastating Chelyabinsk Meteor Strike: ’7x As Likely’ As Thought
NASA’s checked its space rock maths and it’s not good news
The Register
NASA has revealed fresh research on the Chelyabinsk meteorite that exploded over Russia in February, and the findings aren’t good: not only does it look like the astronomic models about the number of similar-sized things reaching Earth are wrong, but also the damage they can do is much greater than expected.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a big chunk of rock. Credit: M. Ahmetvaleev
“Over the past few decades we’ve seen an impact rate about seven times greater than the current state of the telescopic surveys would indicate.”
Cooke said that as the current state of asteroid surveys was expanded he expected we would find more meteorites in the vicinity to account for these impacts, but also that the amount of damage they caused was being reassessed.
The nuclear model used to estimate the amount of explosive force such incidents could cause had, in fact, been over estimating the blast impacts of such air-bursting meteors, he explained. But the amount of heat they generate, and the damage caused by the shockwave of air they push before them as they come down through the atmosphere, was significantly underestimated.
The Chelyabinsk meteor is the largest foreign body to come down to Earth since the Tunguska event in 1908, where a comet or meteor devastated 2,150 square kilometers of Siberia with an airburst, according to Lindley Johnson, NEO program executive of NASA’s planetary science division.
Thanks to the amount of dashcam videos, smartphones with cameras, the work of “citizen scientists,” and boffins around the world sharing their data, NASA has now piece together exactly what happened during the Chelyabinsk event he explained.
The meteorite arrived completely unexpectedly because it was coming at Earth with the Sun behind it, masking its progress NASA said. It hit our atmosphere at a speed of 42,500 mph (19 kilometers per second) and the vast majority of its mass was destroyed in the detonation 23 kilometers above Russia.
Around 9,000 to 13,000lb (4,000 to 6,000 kilograms) of the meteor survived the blast and fell to Earth, including several chunks that have been recovered. From an analysis of the remains scientists have concluded that fractures in the meteorite (formed from an impact with another space rock) left veins of silicates running throughout its body, making it much more likely to break up in the friction with our atmosphere.
What??
Ok, what happened to the stories where a rocket was to have impacted it before it hit the ground.
Around 9,000 to 13,000lb (4,000 to 6,000 kilograms) of the meteor survived the blast and fell to Earth, including several chunks that have been recovered. From an analysis of the remains scientists have concluded that fractures in the meteorite (formed from an impact with another space rock) left veins of silicates running throughout its body, making it much more likely to break up in the friction with our atmosphere.
But this waited till it was almost down to break up. And 9-13k pounds? But only a chunk survived ?
That last paragraph is a bit confusing, don’t you think the bigger chunks would have been found…not smaller ones?
Oh and it came from the sun side…so we didn’t see it….shouldn’t we have seen it when it went around the sun?
Have you ever looked at the planet from orbit in a space program? Ever see the amount of machines orbiting our planet?
How does something that big walk right by all that technology? And…why can’t we see something headed our way? To close to see? Has to be thousands of Au away?.
Oh and wait…there’s mooore….all of a sudden, there’s impacts all over our planet…and meteor sightings all over our planet…fire balls in the sky….I’m only in my 40′s but I can’t seem to remember when so many sky objects have been seen , reported, or happening… I used to watch the summer sky looking for shooting stars.
I personally have seen a few things in the sky…but not at the frequency all of us are seeing them now
I’ll do my best to answer your questions in order asked.
The object was very large and considerably dense. It most likely broke up due to uneven heating. Most meteors you see actually occur at 12-50 kilometers (7.5-31 miles) up. This one was no exception. It exploded around 23 km (14 miles) up.
Only small chunks survived when compared to the meteor as a whole. The largest chunk found so far is 650 kg (1400 pounds). The majority of it vaporized, much like the majority of meteors that enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Larger pieces may eventually be found, but the areas most of them landed are sparsely populated at best. That, coupled with the natural weathering process, means not all of them will be found. On a side note, it is estimated the planet has about 90,000 kg (100 tons) of stellar material fall to its surface each and every day. Just nearly all of it is too small to see, happens during the day, or occurs in unpopulated areas such as desert, ocean, or the polar regions.
Just because it came from around the Sun doesn’t mean that we would have seen it before it passed behind. The asteroid was 18 m (60 feet) in size. The Sun is 150 million km (93 million miles) away. Even if it had a high angular separation from the Sun, it still may have gone unseen pretty easily. Asteroids can have fairly low albedos. Coming from the Sun is a similar tactic used by birds of prey and fighter pilots alike. It is very easy to go unseen from this position.
The majority of things we have in orbit are pointed towards Earth. Most of them are GPS, weather, imaging, spy, research, communications, etc satellites. In fact, almost all of the searching for NEOs is done from the ground. The projects of the Catalina Sky Survey, LINEAR, NEAT, Pan-STAARS, and Spacewatch are ground based. NASA proposed the NEOcam in 2010, which should be able to detect these types of objects (as long as it were pointed in the right direction), but that has yet to come to fruition.
The asteroid really wasn’t that big. Compared to you and I and most things we encounter on a daily basis, its enormous. Compared to celestial sizes, it’s not even the size of a grain of sand.
As far as hearing reports of things such as this more frequently, it can come down to a few simple things. As stated in the article above, the increased use of cameras everywhere has added to the fray. The internet and international 24-hour news networks also makes sharing and spreading information a lot easier and quicker. One example is the American Meteor Society. They have records going back nearly 100 years, but with the growing widespread access to the internet, reporting them has really grown over the past decade. Plus, when a story is popular the news does tend to beat it to the ground. You can’t deny that! Look at it this way: Remember a couple years ago when there were all the mass die offs of flocks of birds and stuff? Scientists were saying that it was nothing out of the ordinary, and that it happens all the time. It was in the news around the world for a couple months, then something else came along to fixate our attentions and the news about it died down. You’re experiencing the same trend, but with a different topic.
I know where you are coming from friend! I’m in my fifties now and I have to say that I have seen escalation after escalation after escalation. People all of a sudden decided that it was cool to own a house, 2 cars with garages, fly to exotic destinations – ad nauseum’ With the building of HUGE shopping malls, mobile phones brought in the ‘spoiled’ era. It was no longer acceptable to allow kids to play in the streets because of parents suing other parents for ‘shouting at their child’, I used to get a clip if I answered back to ANY grownup! What’s more, if I told my parents, they would clip me too!! If people want to see why we are having these problems, they only need look in the mirror! Everything has been speeding up since the year 2000, in just 13 years I have witnessed unprecedented events from towers falling at ‘free-fall’ speed (Muslims indeed lol)
kids getting shot in schools (all false flags) people being groped at airports, homeland security buying millions of hollow point bullets (nasty) FEMA camps becoming ready, more false flags, more people being murdered. All in the name of ‘terrorism’? Indeed this is true but the terror isn’t coming from abroad, it’s the damn government!! They believe that their antics will secure them a future in this world, but the one thing they have negated to realize, is that people are magnanimous when they are backed into a corner. We are spiritual beings and will raise conscious awareness as the time gets closer, for those in ‘power’ to make their move.
it was never a meteor. it was a PLASMA MISSILE.
what are the chances of a “meteor” just happening to hit atop Russia’s top comlex of nuclear underground silos and defense mechanisms? of all the spots on the planet- it “just happens to hit there”- not once but TWICE lolol. give us a break. this false flag nonsense is beyond belief.
only thing missing is “Aliens steering them”. lolol