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Asteroids in Russia
Feb. 19th, 2013 11:29 pmOnce again, a post about science!
So, you might have seen recently that there was a meteor that fell to earth in Russia on Friday. The link goes to a compilation video of the meteor falling, recorded by video cameras on car dashboards.
Today, we have had more information released about the meteor.
The meteor is estimated to have been approximately 17 metres in diameter. That's equivalent to enough water to fill 8 Olympic sized swimming pools! To me, this does seem remarkably large. However, the Tunguska event in 1908, which flattened a vast swathe of Siberian forest, was, it is believed, caused by a meteor over twice the diameter of this one.
The estimated blast strength of this particular meteor is that it was equivalent to 500 kilotons of TNT, or about 30 of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. However, as this occurred 15-20 Km above the surface of the earth, far less damage was caused than at Hiroshima. The other comparison is with the Tunguska event, that is estimated to have been equivalent to 10-15 Megatons of TNT at about 5-10Km.
More information about the impact can be found here for those of you who are interested.
So, you might have seen recently that there was a meteor that fell to earth in Russia on Friday. The link goes to a compilation video of the meteor falling, recorded by video cameras on car dashboards.
Today, we have had more information released about the meteor.
The meteor is estimated to have been approximately 17 metres in diameter. That's equivalent to enough water to fill 8 Olympic sized swimming pools! To me, this does seem remarkably large. However, the Tunguska event in 1908, which flattened a vast swathe of Siberian forest, was, it is believed, caused by a meteor over twice the diameter of this one.
The estimated blast strength of this particular meteor is that it was equivalent to 500 kilotons of TNT, or about 30 of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. However, as this occurred 15-20 Km above the surface of the earth, far less damage was caused than at Hiroshima. The other comparison is with the Tunguska event, that is estimated to have been equivalent to 10-15 Megatons of TNT at about 5-10Km.
More information about the impact can be found here for those of you who are interested.
