Huge meteor over Russia

MikeSands wrote:

The big explosion was about 10km up, so presumably most of it got vaporised long before hitting the ground.

They explode because they are vaporising, so yeah, expect pieces to be pretty small...

Like some here, my mind went right to Tunguska.

I am wondering about any significance about 2 serious meteor strikes, in the same national region, in about 100 years. The 1908 air burst leveled a huge area of forest.

KingGorilla wrote:

Like some here, my mind went right to Tunguska.

I am wondering about any significance about 2 serious meteor strikes, in the same national region, in about 100 years. The 1908 air burst leveled a huge area of forest.

The significance is probably that their nation is on a continent with a substantial land mass and advanced enough society to record such things. I would not be surprised if more meteors end up over oceans, or Africa, where we would generally not hear about them.

A meteor strike like the other day's is apparently a once every 30-40 years level event. Tunguska was closer to a once every couple of centuries event.

I am wondering about any significance about 2 serious meteor strikes, in the same national region, in about 100 years.

Russia is the country with the single largest land mass in the world, so a rock from space has a higher chance of hitting somewhere in their territory than anywhere else.

Also note that economic development is very important; if that exact same meteor had struck somewhere in the gigantic continent of Africa, chances are excellent that nobody would have caught it on camera. The only reason we're paying so much attention to this one is because of the ubiquity of the Russian dashcams.

We might have had something just like that a month ago, but it hit somewhere in Africa, or in the Australian outback, or in the rain forests of South America, and nobody but a few disconnected locals even noticed.

And how many meteorites have plunged into the ocean, entirely unobserved by Man?

Malor wrote:
I am wondering about any significance about 2 serious meteor strikes, in the same national region, in about 100 years.

Russia is the country with the single largest land mass in the world, so a rock from space has a higher chance of hitting somewhere in their territory than anywhere else.

Also note that economic development is very important; if that exact same meteor had struck somewhere in the gigantic continent of Africa, chances are excellent that nobody would have caught it on camera. The only reason we're paying so much attention to this one is because of the ubiquity of the Russian dashcams.

We might have had something just like that a month ago, but it hit somewhere in Africa, or in the Australian outback, or in the rain forests of South America, and nobody but a few disconnected locals even noticed.

And how many meteorites have plunged into the ocean, entirely unobserved by Man?

Or how many rogue waves or unexplained tsunamis have resulted from something like this?

Hmm, dunno. I would think that something that would cause a tsunami would be so large that everyone would know about it, but I'm not sure.

I actually came back to post a comment that was originally on reddit, but I don't have a link, as it's secondhand:

"In Soviet Russia, space explores you!"

Malor wrote:

Hmm, dunno. I would think that something that would cause a tsunami would be so large that everyone would know about it, but I'm not sure.

I actually came back to post a comment that was originally on reddit, but I don't have a link, as it's secondhand:

"In Soviet Russia, space explores you!"

*cough*

Nomad wrote:

Or how many rogue waves or unexplained tsunamis have resulted from something like this?

Very little actually. Waves, in the middle of an ocean, perhaps. But tsunamis, not so much. There are some weird rules for wave propagation, and meteor size required for a wave to generate a tsunami that would travel for 1000km would be enormous. Maybe half the size of an extinction event size of meteor. We'd have much bigger problems than tsunamis if such a rock hit us.

IMAGE(http://i.minus.com/izTZTZzMsaThB.gif)

The problem with that asteroid discovery timeline video is that it is totally misleading. And it even mentions it in the voice over. The scale of the objects is way off from the planets to the sun to the size of the asteroids. So the problem is that if that video were too scale, you either would not be able to see anything but the sun or if you could see the earth as a pixel, everything else, including the moon would be off screen.

Or do you believe that all asteroids are 1/10 the size of mercury? The only thing accurate in that animation is numbers of asteroids.

For example take any photograph of a galaxy and marvel at how many billions of stars there are. And they are so bright that it looks like they are all on top of each other. Except, like solar systems in our galaxy, the overwhelming majority are 10's of light years away at a minimum.

Every visualization is a tradeoff, which is one reason why it's important to be educated as to what the visuals (and the science behind the visuals) actually mean. (cf. Edward Tufte)

Wow, that Russian guy is cool as a cucumber. At the first glimpse of the meteor I'd have slammed on the brakes, ran out of the car and tried to take pictures of what to me would be the even of a lifetime!

For reference, the size range of asteroids are few meters to over 900 km across. The distance between asteroids is varied but the average is approximately 1 million km.

That graphic would have you believe that the majority of asteroids are nearly 900 km in diameter (represented as a fraction of mercury's nearly 5,000 km diameter) and since they are shown right on top of one another, they are represented as less than 900 km from each other.

edit: I recall someone posting another scare tactic graph that showed the average number of planes in the sky over the US. Unfortunately they made the planes the size of a small state in the graphic so the US looked completely covered.

edit2: found it the planes are as big as Cuba

IMAGE(http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1861qp0mjy5efpng/original.png)

Other facts: half of the mass of the belt is contained in the 4 largest asteroids that range from 400km to 950km in diameter. Also, the graph does not display the height of the asteroid belt which is 7 light minutes which is 126 million km