It was quickly identified as such within the thread. Not sure if it was moved before or after though. That one link should have been deleted, imo. Others pointed to the source - RT - as the problem. Honestly, I think the mod saw the phrase “sparks UFO fears” as was in the original headline and “filed” it in chat.
Not that it matters at this point, and it wasn’t my thread or anything. It was just frustrating is all. People rely on the AP reporting of something to establish validity too often, imo. Just a pet peeve of mine since an interaction I had on election night with the editor of my local paper... :)
We need a live thread for the asteroid near miss! If the world ends, I want to be FReeping.....lol. 20 minutes to go!
Dragnet2 just posted this from JPL on one of the newer threads.
So if this object had entered vertically instead of at a shallow angle, it’s possible it wouldn’t not have broken up and could have essentially destroyed a city of over 1 million people, Chelyabinsk:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-061
February 15, 2013
Preliminary information indicates that a fireball in Chelyabinsk, Russia, is not related to asteroid 2012 DA14, which is flying by Earth safely today.
The Russian fireball is the largest reported since 1908, when a fireball hit Tunguska, Siberia. The fireball entered the atmosphere at about 40,000 mph (18 kilometers per second). The impact time was 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15), and the energy released by the impact was in the hundreds of kilotons.
Based on the duration of the event, it was a very shallow entry. It was larger than the fireball over Indonesia on Oct. 8, 2009. Measurements are still coming in, and a more precise measure of the energy may be available later. The size of the object before hitting the atmosphere was about 49 feet (15 meters) and had a mass of about 7,000 tons.
The fireball, which was about one-third the diameter of asteroid 2012 DA14, was brighter than the sun. Its trail was visible for about 30 seconds, so it was a grazing impact through the atmosphere.
It is important to note that this estimate is preliminary, and may be revised as more data is obtained.