Friday, February 15, 2013

Over 1000 Injured in Meteor Blast!


  • Over 1000 people were hurt when a meteor slammed into a remote Russian village.

  •  According to NASA the small asteroid released the equivalent to 300,000 tons of TNT, the space agency's officials said Friday, adding that the incident was a once-in-100-years event.  

  • A large portion of the injuries were caused by flying glass and other debris, resulting from the powerful shock wave.  Most of those hurt, including at last count, over 200 children,  are in the Chelyabinsk region.  Apx. 3000 building were damaged.  

  • From the CNN article:


  • Vladimir Stepanov, of the National Center for Emergency Situations at the Russian Interior Ministry, earlier told state media that hospitals, kindergartens and schools were among those affected.

  • The national space agency, Roscosmos, said scientists believed one meteoroid had entered the atmosphere, where it burned and disintegrated into fragments.  The resulting meteorites are believed to be scattered across three regions of Russia.




UPDATE
Kallamis just wrote to say that the stats have been changed

The meteors size is now thought to have been 55' wide, and sent off a blast of 500 kiloton.

That's more like 3 city buses or couple of train cars now.  And 500 kiloton?!! damn!

6 comments:

kallamis said...

If it was a 100 hundred year event, then it could be predicted.
Nice fallacy to fool the idiots is all it is.
We get slammed by the whim of the universe, period.
Once again we are show how predictions mean nothing. If they did, then why weren't they ready for this.
I'll stick with being a survivalist thank you very much. And hopefully soon, Some of you will be part of that crew. Better dead than smeg according to the Dwarfers. I have a better saying.
Better ready than dead.

Beam Me Up said...

I don't know...I like the smeg line...never heard that one before...anyway, these dates are the way people deal with the randomness of the universe. It makes them feel better if they can evoke some false sense of security by putting some sort of relative date to happenings so random that they can not be predicted...that way we get nonsense like 65 million years for dinosaur killer class of rock and 100 years for a tree flattening.

kallamis said...

Exactly. Also most people don't realize just how many times a day the Earth gets struck.
We even had a show on TV called meteorite hunters or something like that, (never saw it), and still they don't know.
Basically every few months we get hit by something approaching bus or house sized, and that isn't counting the thousands that hit us each day.
I mean, when you think about it, it's actually quite interesting. We add like 40,000 - 75,000 ton a year from this alone. Most is rice or sand particle sized, but that just goes to show haw many times we get hit.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised by how many people have been hit, and don't even realize that they were. A dust particle sized wouldn't have the impact of say one the size of a pea even. Especially when something that size would have it's speed wiped out by the atmosphere alone. What little speed there was. In terms of something say like an extinction event sized monstrosity.
And that line is from Season 6 episode 6, Out of time. It's the one where they got into battle with their future selves. As a matter of fact, it was spoken by Arnold Judas Rimmer of all people. Yeah, I'm a Dwarfer.
Which brings up a question. Do you happen to remember an old 70's Tv show, made way before it's time in this country called QUARK? I do. Probably why I'm such a bloody Dwarfer now.

kallamis said...

Oops, forgot this. See, you got me sidetracked.
The meteors size is now thought to have been 55' wide, and sent off a blast of 500 kiloton.



Beam Me Up said...

I watched it once...standard bull s... reality tv Now that type of show has devolved into two morons with metal detectors digging up scrap..

But it did remind me that Earth gets several hundreds of tons of material daily, its' just when a hunnerd tun of it gets together to whack ya....lol

Beam Me Up said...

I just put that update out front! Thanks Kall