Russian 'meteor' was actually a tiny asteroid, NASA says (45 feet across, 10,000 tons & 40,000 mph)

The Los Angeles Times ^ | February 16, 2013 | Monte Morin

[2ndDivisionVet]

At a news conference Friday, NASA scientists said the object that exploded over Russia was a “tiny asteroid” that measured roughly 45 feet across, weighed about 10,000 tons and traveled about 40,000 mph.

The object vaporized roughly 15 miles above the surface of the Earth, causing a shock wave that triggered the global network of listening devices that was established to detect nuclear test explosions.

The force of the explosion measured between 300 and 500 kilotons, equivalent to a modern nuclear bomb, according to Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

“When you hear about injuries, those are undoubtedly due to the events of the shock striking the city and causing walls to collapse and glass to fly, not due to fragments striking the ground,” Cooke said.

Scientists believe the object originated from the asteroid belt, a vast collection of debris orbiting between Mars and Jupiter that consists of leftover bits from the formation of the solar system. The asteroid probably traveled for a year before it burst into the atmosphere Friday. As yet, no fragments have been recovered, but experts believe the asteroid was rocky in nature, and not formed of dense iron and nickel...

[Andrei Bulba]

Agree with you and Tigerseye except the definition of asteroid is orbiting the sun, most but not all being in the asteroid belt. So agree upon entering the atmosphere it was a “meteor”. I’m not certain of NASA’s clarification that it was a small asteroid, however other things can enter the atmosphere such as a comet though again they orbit the sun and can be viewed as icy asteroids which produce a visible tail.

Mostly nomenclature I guess, however they said this one probably traveled a year before hitting us. Because it must have been in space for millions of years, I think they mean it got deflected inward from the asteroid belt, probably by an impact with another object.

This baby came at us much faster on a different path than the near miss asteroid so it’s sobering to think a deflection can head for us on short notice and go unnoticed till impact.

[Ezekiel]

Don't short the Incendiary Index. :)

Revelation 16:21 And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, [every stone] about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great.

5464 chalaza {khal'-ad-zah}
probably from 5465;; n f
AV - hail 4; 4

1) hail

from 5465...

5465 chalao {khal-ah'-o}
from the base of 5490;; v
AV - let down 6, strike 1; 7

1) to loosen, slacken, relax
2) to let down from a higher place to a lower

from the base of 5490...

5490 chasma {khas'-mah}
from a form of an obsolete prim chao (to "gape" or "yawn");; n n
AV - gulf 1; 1

1) a gaping opening, a chasm, a gulf

Cf.

chasm (n.)

1590s, "deep crack in the earth," from Latin chasma, from Greek khasma "yawning hollow, gulf," related to khaskein "to yawn," and thus to chaos. In English in 17c. often spelled chasma.

 

What's a Chelyaba anyway?

It's a Bashkir word meaning "pit".

http://chelyabinskteaching.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-chelyaba-anyway.html

[Eye of Unk]

Again I remember a sci-fi novel where a war involved changing the trajectories of asteroids to impact a planet, some were even aimed by attached booster rockets.

Imagine some nation with the ability to launch rockets into space, land on a nearby orbiting rock and the make it change course to strike a specific part of planet Earth.

[TigersEye]

Er uhhh, asking me to do math is risky. Let’s say it was a cube 45 ft. on a side for ease. I believe that would be 91,125 cu ft. That is 3,375 cu. yds. By your figures that would make a concrete cube 45 ft. per side 13,500,000 lb.s or 6,750 tons. Wow! I guess a rock that big could be 10k tons.

[wastedyears]

Do you remember the name of that novel?

[TigersEye]

I’ll give the NASA scientist a break. It was the article title and not his quote that seemed to make a distinction between an asteroid and a meteor based on size. Which is incorrect because size has nothing to do with that. And, FWIW, it was an asteroid until it hit our atmosphere.

[LibertyRocks]

Hmmm.... Russian scientists have found three distinct impact sites - one in a frozen lake.

Yes, it exploded during descent, but it wasn’t disintegrated or vaporized completely. Parts of this mini-asteroid became meteorites.

[GraceG]

This event is a blessing as it is warning, we need to develop space assets to mitigate these risks...

[alexander_busek]

The asteroid probably traveled for a year before it burst into the atmosphere Friday.

--From the article

So... It didn't start "traveling" until a year ago?! It was motionless all the preceding time?

Journalists! Sheesh!

Regards,

[Paul R.]

Volume of a sphere is:

V = (4/3) × pi × r^3
with pi = 3.141592653589793

Or, just use this online calculator:

http://www.basic-mathematics.com/volume-of-a-sphere-calculator.html

The figure I’ve seen most was a 15 meter diameter. Whether that’s when it exploded, or when it 1st entered the atmosphere, I am unsure. It might have burned off quite a bit of material before it exploded. Nonetheless, assuming a roughly spherical shape, and a 15 meter diameter:

Ice is around 917 kg / cubic meter (varies slightly depending on how cold it is and how it formed), so I came up with around 1600 metric tons assuming the whole thing was ice.

Granite would be around 2700 kg / cu. meter, which gives a mass of roughly 4711 metric tons.

Iron is 7870 kg / cu. m, so that’d run it up to 13,747 metric tons. Now we’re talkin’...

Somewhere in there, 10,000 tons is not an unreasonable estimate, but might be a bit high, as this was likely a “stony” meteorite, I’ve read.

If this had been a fairly solid chunk of nickel-iron, and had not come in at a shallow angle, somebody would not be there any more. Maybe a lot of somebodies.

The AP article on Fox Online was quoting a figure of 10 tons along with the 15 meter diameter. I assume the density of their own brain cells was their reference. (If you are smart and you don’t know, you ask!)

[LibertyRocks]

Upon re-reading I see I half mis-understood the first quote. I thought the scientist was saying nothing hit the ground, but he was only addressing the cause of injuries (which now have been counted into over 1,000 people with - last I checked - 34 needing hospitalization.)

Also, we are lucky it came in at an angle and the atmosphere had time to break it up. Had it come straight down it may not have broken up, and - according to some - could have taken out that whole city of 1 million people.

There was no advance warning because of its positioning between the Earth and the Sun on approach.

I watched a documentary last night and some scientists from NASA were talking about a scenario just like this. They stated that even if one was coming that we saw there is nothing we could do about it.

[Paul R.]

Better yet is “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein. The “Loonies” (inhabitants on Earth’s Moon) rebel against an oppressive Earth Gov. & plunk the Earth with steel jacketed 100 ton boulders launched by magnetic catapult.

Great read: That book did more to make me a conservative back in my late teens than anything my parents could have done or said.

[TigersEye]

The AP article on Fox Online was quoting a figure of 10 tons along with the 15 meter diameter.

Alert Mayor Bloomberg. Earth is being bombarded with styrofoam meteors! lol

[Paul R.]

If we had an even half-###’ed space program the last 20 years, by now we’d have the capability to spot from multiple locations, and the ability to hit something while it’s far enough away to be effective. It doesn’t actually take all that much to deflect one of these things “sufficiently” if it’s a couple weeks or more out. The bigger the asteroid or comet is, the harder it is to deflect, but the easier it is to detect further out, so even less angular deflection is needed.

Also, there is a stupid notion (given that a lot of these people are supposedly “scientists”), that blowing one up closer in results in an even worse rain of pieces upon us than if we leave it alone.

Wrong.

The smaller the pieces, the more they burn up in the atmosphere.

Toughest is probably a large “mushy” comet, as you may not be able to push on it without it coming apart. No problem though: Comets are easily spotted, so nuke it 2 months out, and almost all the pieces will have new trajectories that will easily miss the Earth.

[Paul R.]

Hahaha!

On another thread I also speculated “cotton candy”.

[Paul R.]

Hahaha!

On another thread I also speculated “cotton candy”.

[wardaddy]

Exaggeration

It was the equivalent of a rather small modern nuke....about 20-35 times Nagasaki

But a tiny fraction of tsar bomba.....1%

[abb]

“Journalists” are notoriously inept at mathematics. Or any of the hard sciences and disciplines which require logic.

[Newtoidaho]

Book

[Stonewall Jackson]

That is a tactic used in The Shiva Option by David Weber and Steve White, which is a sequel to In Death Ground. Humanity and her allies are in a fight-to-the-death with the Arachnids (similar to the Bugs from Starship Troopers) and one of the tactics used on one of the Arachnid homeworlds is Operation Sledgehammer. This involves using fleet tugs to pull asteroids out of the system's belt and send them careening toward the planet. The Arachnids manage to shoot a couple of them down, but several get through and pulverize the planet.

This tactic has been used in several books over the years, but that is the only one I can remember at this time.