Breaking: Large meteorite hits Russia, multiple video cameras capture entry & explosion

Just when you thought you were in control. A meteorite hit Russia during the early hours of the morning and multiple video cameras caught the fast-moving object as it flew over the Russian Urals and exploded.

Amazing video.

Update: This morning just after the 7 a.m. ET, the top-of-the-hour news on the Today Show had this story. Does NBC deserve the “stupid caption of the week” award?

Could the same thing happen here?

Who writes the news tease captions at NBC? That’s a question a first grader would ask, so maybe NBC is targeting that particular audience.

Update 2: A video of the multiple sonic booms.

Anyway, from RT.com.

Army units found three meteorite debris impact sites, two of which are in an area near Chebarkul Lake, west of Chelyabinsk. The third site was found some 80 kilometers further to the northwest, near the town of Zlatoust. One of the fragments that struck near Chebarkul left a crater six meters in diameter.
Servicemembers from the tank brigade that found the crater have confirmed that background radiation levels at the site are normal.

Russian space agency Roskosmos has confirmed the object that crashed in the Chelyabinsk region is a meteorite:
“According to preliminary estimates, this space object is of non-technogenic origin and qualifies as a meteorite. It was moving at a low trajectory with a speed of about 30 km/s.”

According to estimates by the Russian Academy of Sciences, the space object weighed about 10 tons before entering Earth’s atmosphere.

As of 15:00 Moscow time, 725 people have sought medical attention in Chelyabinsk alone because of the disaster, 112 of whom have been hospitalized, of them two in heavy condition. Among the injured there are 159 children, Emergency ministry reported.

The article includes something I think to be incredible, but certainly very interesting if there is any truth to it.

According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air defense unit at the Urzhumka settlement near Chelyabinsk. A missile salvo blew the meteorite to pieces at an altitude of 20 kilometers, local newspaper Znak reports quoting a source in the military.

Regnum news agency quoted a military source who claimed that the vapor condensation trail of the meteorite speaks to the fact that the meteorite was intercepted by air defenses.

Posted in

Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

8 Comments

  1. Anne-EH on February 15, 2013 at 8:30 am

    Well I have heard about a coming close flyby to earth of an asteroid that NASA is keeping tabs on.



  2. JBS on February 15, 2013 at 8:33 am

    Terrifyingly surreal.
    ?
    Stupid caption suggestion: Is there any Kryptonite in that meteor?



  3. stinkfoot on February 15, 2013 at 12:36 pm

    When a CNN anchor (Deb Feyerick) asks Bill Nye whether an asteroid approaching the earth was caused by global warming then is it any stretch that somewhere an empty suit propaganda conduit will spin a narrative based on the assumption that there was a connection to the meteorite that hit Russia?? There are reasons that my only television gathers dust in storage.



    • JBS on February 15, 2013 at 3:58 pm

      It is nice not to have that constant din of noise in the house.
      Just think of how many brain cells you saved!



  4. Lynn on February 15, 2013 at 12:45 pm

    I sincerely hope that a missile did intercept the meteorite. It might have saved lives. How scary for thechildren.?
    ?



    • PaulBartomioli on February 16, 2013 at 8:31 am

      and the adults all were not scared at all. ?That meteorite entered the earth at approximately 17,000 miles per hour. ?The?missiles?carried on fighter jets travel at about 600 miles per hour. ?Do the math. ?This is also the country that floated a balloon that this was an American test gone bad over a known hazmat site. The fragments occurred from break up as the giant rock entered the atmosphere. ?NASA estimates that the earth atmosphere ?is breached approximately 20,000 times per year by?meteorites. Most burn up in the atmosphere. ?Those that do land hit the 66% of the earth where no one lives, the oceans.



  5. sammy22 on February 15, 2013 at 4:10 pm

    There is debate whether to blow up a big one or nudge out of the way. Blowing something like this up makes more (smaller) pieces and potentially more widespread damage.



    • PaulBartomioli on February 16, 2013 at 8:32 am

      @sammy. ?bingo.?
      ?



square-meteorite-russia

The website's content and articles were migrated to a new framework in October 2023. You may see [shortcodes in brackets] that do not make any sense. Please ignore that stuff. We may fix it at some point, but we do not have the time now.

You'll also note comments migrated over may have misplaced question marks and missing spaces. All comments were migrated, but trackbacks may not show.

The site is not broken.