Ten geezerhood ago today , Earth was struck by the most striking and grievous meteor impact in living memory : theChelyabinsk meteor . While the world fuck off off comparatively lightly from this incident – many casualty , but no fatalities – it was a unrelenting reminder that the threat of meteors should never be underestimated . Just askthe dinosaur .
Chelyabinsk: The largest meteor impact in living memory
On February 15 , 2013 , at 9:20 am as people were have quick for the daylight , the sky above Russia light up with a shiny streak above Chelyabinsk Oblast in the southern Ural region . Shocked onlookers did n’t know at the time , but this was the result of a outer space stone crashing to Earth .
At an height of around 45 klick ( 30 miles ) , it slammed into the atmosphereat a speed of19 kilometre per second ( 42,690 naut mi per hour ) , result in a violent shockwave that was roughly the equivalent of 440 kiloton explosion of TNT , accord toNASA .
Later research indicated that the celestial aim initially mensurate around 20 meters ( 65 pes ) wide and weighed approximately 12,000 lashings . That ’s relatively small for a meteorite , but it intelligibly packed a slug .
The Chelyabinsk meteor on display at the State History Museum of South Ural in Chelyabinsk. Image credit: Vyacheslav BukharovCC BY-SA 4.0
Windows shattered , motorcar dismay went off , and roofs founder , resulting in the harm of some 1,500 mass . Thanks to smartphones , vehicle elan Cam , and security cameras , the result is perhaps the first time a spectacular meteor strike was recorded from numerous angle at the same time , allow scientists to study it .
Much of the meteor ’s volume burnt off as it tore through the atmosphere while other chips of the rock were fling across the Chelyabinsk Oblast . School kids and funny residentsreportedlyfound fragments of the meteorite around the local country , but kept it quiet out of fear they might be postulate aside by scientist or state authorities .
In the hours following the initial crash , a 6 - meter ( 20 - foot ) wide trap was discovered in the wintry surface of Lake Chebarkul . After a recovery mission that took several months , researchers managed to pull out a 654 - kilo ( 1,442 pounds ) meteorite from the bottom of the lake . The bulk of this incredible object now lies at the State History Museum of South Ural in Chelyabinsk .
The Chelyabinsk meteorite was a bit of a heat - up call of how a bounteous meteorite wallop might affect Earth , but we ’re still amazingly spoiled at bode them .
How do we predict meteor impacts?
Earlier this workweek , a modest meteor about 1 meter ( 3 groundwork ) in diameter burned up over the Channel between France and the UK in the early hours of the morning time . Remarkably , that was just the seventh time ever an asteroid shock has beenpredicted before it pass off .
scientist and blank space delegacy around the cosmos keep a close eye on the trouble through themonitoring of near - Earth objects . Once found , the orbital cavity of those objects can be determined and theirfuture paths predictedto assess whether an impact is likely . However , manypotentially risky objectscontinue toremain undetected .
Humanity is n’t completely clueless about the progeny though . Last class saw the success of NASA ’s incredibleDART mission , where the agency purposely crashed a ballistic capsule into a celestial object for the first time , changing its eye socket forever . It showed that we potentially possess thepower to deflect a quad rockthat ’s heading toward Earth .
That depends , however , on whether we distinguish the severe space stone before it ’s too belatedly .
