Here's a great dashcam video that captures the meteor arcing across its field of vision and lighting up the scene more brightly than the sun like a nuclear blast (first submitted to HN by dennisgorelik). I almost thought it was a hoax, and even tried to examine the video for signs that it was CGI.
The guy doesn't even say anything for a long while, just starts speeding up.
edit: Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy (Slate) think it's unrelated to the 2012DA14 asteroid, because of the timing gap and incorrect direction of travel. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking... This could have turned out very badly if the thing had hit the ground...could we have caught this one, and why didn't we?
[Edit] Some translation from the first video:
A lot of dirty language.
Just after thunder: "What the f..k?! What is going on? Bombing! Preliminary bombardment!" "Don't worry for now. Nothing is clear yet. It's a preliminary bombardment. Wow, what a film I shot! Go for our jackets! Run!"
When running:
"It's something serious, run!""Don't worry men! The most interesting is only beginning!"
At the entrance of student dormitory: "We can't go inside for our jackets?" "You can't enter!"
Then "Guys, warm up, I feel cold! I have filmed everything: explosion, falling, everything!" - "Show what you filmed." - "Later-later! No idea what to do now!" "Something flied by and there was flash" "Later, we don't know if something else will explode" "It was flash and then it flied to the forest, then we ran out I started to film and then thunder" "What an adventure! Cool!" "You see it entered the atmosphere and started to burn and then the pieces fell to the ground" "F..k I thought it's war!" "No worries" "I didn't understand what exploded. It's a small comet but what exploded?" "Mirrors broke"."I like it! The mirrors are broken in the building" "OK, bye, stop for now"
Not much to translate: "WTF??? What happened? It is f*cking WAR!", "Did you see that? Did they launch a rocket? Looks like they did... WTF!", "Shiiii... was it bomb?"
I just found this by using the "last hour" filter mmastrac suggested.
EDIT: It doesn't seem to be a crater caused by a meteorite. By looking at the youtube video "cfn" (comment below) looks like it's a gas explosion in 2007. Still, amazing.
> Can anyone translate what they are saying in the first one?
You probably don't want to know. Lots of cussing :)
He actually has no idea what's going on. At one point he jokes about artillery strikes and then starts calming down his friends ("Don't be afraid, nothing's happened yet.")
Then he urges his friends to go grab their jackets (apparently they ran out to the street without them). While running, he exclaims "now, that's some serious shit!" and then urges his friends to be calm once more.
"The most interesting stuff is about to begin."
The guard at the entrance tells them they can't come in to take their jackets.
"That thing flew by, there was a flash and it crashed in the woods."
"What an adventure!"
"It entered the atmosphere and started burning. The remaining stuff then crashed."
"I thought a war's underway."
"Don't cower. But I didn't get what the explosions were about."
"The windows are all smashed."
"I love it!!!"
....
It must be some kind of college. The kids must be students.
He first said it is preperation. Something to prepare for. He is saying take your jackets and lets run. The best is yet to come.
When he runs into the group he describes that it was flying overhead. Then he points to the smoke saying it was in the atmosphere. People said that could be war starting. They were not sure of the reason for the explosion. He almost got hit by the broken glass.
It takes events like this to highlight how awesome it is to have a large number of people constantly recording video. Integrated dashcams with a circular buffer should become ubiquitous standard equipment IMO.
That is an amazing event. I am not sure I buy the meteorite story. Has anyone checked on 2012-DA14 [1] the asteroid that was supposed to cross between the earth and geosync orbit this evening? One conjecture would be it knocked something out of orbit.
The air defense stuff is somewhat hard to believe, we don't intercept de-orbiting space junk, much less less hypersonic meteors. Further every missile interceptor that is publicly disclosed (which includes the US attempts at an exo-atmospheric interceptor) have boost stages that generate a lot of vapor, there is no rising vapor trail in any of the videos of a ground based interceptor.
Finally there is the magnitude of the flash. Given the lack of sparkles on the video I don't believe what ever exploded was nuclear but on the videos with timers watching the flash and timing the 'boom' correlates with the 20 - 25 km (80,000') in altitude. One hopes it wasn't a surveillance aircraft that was destroyed. I'm sure if it was we'll hear about that in the morning.
>According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air defense unit
Anyone else catch this? Is this just a bad translation and they mean to say that an air defense unit tracked the meteorite on radar?
I wouldn't think any air defense system would be capable of actually intercepting a meteorite, but perhaps I'm wrong. Still doesn't seem like anything intercepted it from the videos.
From the videos, this was almost certainly a metallic meteorite (stony meteorites rarely survive their flight through the atmosphere). And it's very likely that part of it got to the ground intact. Get ready for stories about recovering a lot of meteorite material in the next few days.
The contrails, and the videos, show that the meteorite (or pair of meteorites) grew very hot, but survived at least in part and probably fell to the surface. I would love to see the recovery effort.
Notice the long delay between recording the image of the contrail and the sonic boom. This reveals how high the meteorite's path was at the location of the recording.
Maybe this will help people appreciate that space is not some other world on TV, instead we are in space right now. Yes, it can reach out and touch us.
Just to be pedantic for the hell of it, we're really in space-time, and it's that "time" dimension that makes "space" capable of reaching out and touching us :D
Is it really just a coincidence that this happened the same day as the 2012DA14 asteroid? Some news articles are saying this came from the other direction and that these kinds of smaller asteroids hit 5-10 times a year, and while I put a low trust in my memory I don't recall seeing this stuff all over the news (and at the top of HN!) every couple of months... Or is that true but normally they land in the ocean or unpopulated areas and this one just happened to hit an area with lots of dashboard cams and just happened to occur on the same day as the 2012DA14 flyby? I'm sure less probabilistic things have happened in the history of the universe, but I'm still very curious. Or is it soon to do much but speculate?
Yeah, it is a coincidence. It was debunked pretty early on, mainley because the direction it is flying in exactly the opposite direction the 2012DA14 will be flying in.
It is believed that the incident may be connected to asteroid 2012 DA14, which measures 45 to 95 meters in diameter and will be passing by Earth tonight at around 19:25 GMT at the record close range of 27,000 kilometers.
apparently there was a risk that asteroid would intercept a satellite orbit. Too early to say, but it seems more likely than mere coincidence.
I suspect the meteorite and earthquake are not related. The only recent earthquake that fits your description was M6.6 at 67.580°N 142.593°E [1], that's about ~2630 miles away from the reported meteorite impact in Chelyabinsk, Russia [2].
Wow, do you know how lucky we all are? Silly little shit like this could easily start WW3.
We need complete ICBM disarmament. They can keep their bombs and we can keep ours (for now), but we should restrict delivery systems such that there is a built in lag (bombers taking many minutes or hours to reach their targets), and can be recalled. ICBM's can be launched in a moment, and it is impossible to recall them or disable them once they are underway.
When you look at a commercial jet flying at 10k meters from the ground, it takes a long while until it disappears from the skyline. This meteorite crossed the entire skyline in a matter of seconds. That's just mind bogging. Also, the sound blast arrived waaay after the main explosion, and since it's been traveling at ~360 meters per second. I wonder if anyone here could estimate the speed of that rock in the atmosphere.
Nowhere on the linked page is there any reference to a 6.9 quake. There wasn't an earthquake of any kind, although, "Witnesses said the explosion was so loud that it resembled an earthquake and thunder at the same time..."
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to believe anyway. Wasn't the rule that RT is considered accurate on any stories not involving Russia?
I can't get over how long it takes for the sonic boom to hit. This video has the meteorite trail on camera for 27 seconds before you hear the boom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA
How fast does something have to be travelling to build up a delay like that?
While it's moving at great speed, it's really about distance that determines the gap with sonic booms. Speed of sound is ~340m/s at sea level, so using that value with a gap of 27 seconds we can assume the boom originated ~9.1km away from the camera(thus it took 27 seconds for the sound to reach the camera). The distance is probably wrong given the speed of sound is different depending on the altitude.
The speed had more to do with the magnitude of the boom itself.
I don't get why everyone seems to be running out of (what appear to be) fairly sturdy concrete buildings and into the street. Sure, a building won't protect you from an incoming meteorite of any size, but being indoors might protect from fragments if an incoming meteor hits something else.
Frankly even in hindsight I would be running out of buildings, not into them. That was one hell of a sonic boom, and do you really want to take the chance of seismic activity following shortly? I would be more concerned about the building falling onto me than the meteorite.
In uncertain circumstances, I think I would almost always prefer not being under concrete.
> I don't get why everyone seems to be running out of (what appear to be) fairly sturdy concrete buildings and into the street.
Well, since one brick structure collapsed, and since one's immediate impression was that it was an earthquake, running out into the street seem perfectly reasonable. The fact that it was a powerful sonic boom, not an earthquake, would be something I might figure out at my leisure only after running outside.
In these circumstances, running outside of an apartment block is not bad because of debris from an impactor crator, it's bad because the sonic boom will shatter glass windows with ease, raining down lethal shards on the people below.
This holds for a nuclear strike as well as a bolide.
They wouldn't know what it was if they were inside. Few months ago in Tucson an F16 broke the sound barrier, some pilot did it while practicing for an air show. I was outside walking back towards my office and saw the jet fly overhead. Then "BOOM" and I knew what the boom came from. People indoors thought a truck crashed in to the office since the building shook and ceiling panels fell.
It's hard to know what caused the boom if they didn't see something first.
Why not run outside? I haven't heard anyone killed by meteorites, so I wouldn't consider them very threatening. If it's not threatening then why not go out and enjoy the show?
[+] [-] mmastrac|13 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIAm5hq8WWc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA
Can anyone translate what they are saying in the first one?
You can get a good idea of the new videos being posted using YouTube's "last hour" filter:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%...
[+] [-] creamyhorror|13 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJOJ6B2XOyA
The guy doesn't even say anything for a long while, just starts speeding up.
edit: Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy (Slate) think it's unrelated to the 2012DA14 asteroid, because of the timing gap and incorrect direction of travel. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking... This could have turned out very badly if the thing had hit the ground...could we have caught this one, and why didn't we?
[+] [-] playing_colours|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DeepDuh|13 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wUqmS35REY
[+] [-] Gibbon|13 years ago|reply
http://oleg-kozyrev.livejournal.com/4468083.html
Examples of other meteorite strikes in the past:
http://oleg-kozyrev.livejournal.com/4468452.html
Damaged zinc plant? https://twitter.com/Dokhrimovich/statuses/302269134685757442
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-russia-meteorit...
AP News Story: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_METEORITE?S...
Video close to epicenter.. Loud boom then broken windows and alarms.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0cFOIoITW4
Hashtag #Челябинск on twitter for more info.
[+] [-] detst|13 years ago|reply
Edit: haha, thanks for the explanations; that changes my interpretation of their reactions.
[+] [-] carbon8|13 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDqYclzto7k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ozSq3yEm3g
[+] [-] imslavko|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] photorized|13 years ago|reply
... followed by a more scientific discussion, about it being a meteorite breaking up etc
[+] [-] soci|13 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cT8vZ-7vxQ
I just found this by using the "last hour" filter mmastrac suggested.
EDIT: It doesn't seem to be a crater caused by a meteorite. By looking at the youtube video "cfn" (comment below) looks like it's a gas explosion in 2007. Still, amazing.
[+] [-] geoka9|13 years ago|reply
You probably don't want to know. Lots of cussing :)
He actually has no idea what's going on. At one point he jokes about artillery strikes and then starts calming down his friends ("Don't be afraid, nothing's happened yet.")
Then he urges his friends to go grab their jackets (apparently they ran out to the street without them). While running, he exclaims "now, that's some serious shit!" and then urges his friends to be calm once more.
"The most interesting stuff is about to begin."
The guard at the entrance tells them they can't come in to take their jackets.
"That thing flew by, there was a flash and it crashed in the woods."
"What an adventure!"
"It entered the atmosphere and started burning. The remaining stuff then crashed."
"I thought a war's underway."
"Don't cower. But I didn't get what the explosions were about."
"The windows are all smashed."
"I love it!!!"
....
It must be some kind of college. The kids must be students.
[+] [-] picklefish|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sheri|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laumars|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marknutter|13 years ago|reply
"EMERGENCY AN ANGEL HAS BEEN ENCOUNTERED IN THE VICINITY"
[+] [-] davesims|13 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA&t=0m26s
[+] [-] lobster45|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SanjayUttam|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexanderZ|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adaml_623|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] apaprocki|13 years ago|reply
1080p of first clip available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-0iwBEswE
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
The air defense stuff is somewhat hard to believe, we don't intercept de-orbiting space junk, much less less hypersonic meteors. Further every missile interceptor that is publicly disclosed (which includes the US attempts at an exo-atmospheric interceptor) have boost stages that generate a lot of vapor, there is no rising vapor trail in any of the videos of a ground based interceptor.
Finally there is the magnitude of the flash. Given the lack of sparkles on the video I don't believe what ever exploded was nuclear but on the videos with timers watching the flash and timing the 'boom' correlates with the 20 - 25 km (80,000') in altitude. One hopes it wasn't a surveillance aircraft that was destroyed. I'm sure if it was we'll hear about that in the morning.
Definitely a mystery.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2013/f...
[+] [-] gph|13 years ago|reply
Anyone else catch this? Is this just a bad translation and they mean to say that an air defense unit tracked the meteorite on radar?
I wouldn't think any air defense system would be capable of actually intercepting a meteorite, but perhaps I'm wrong. Still doesn't seem like anything intercepted it from the videos.
[+] [-] lutusp|13 years ago|reply
The contrails, and the videos, show that the meteorite (or pair of meteorites) grew very hot, but survived at least in part and probably fell to the surface. I would love to see the recovery effort.
Notice the long delay between recording the image of the contrail and the sonic boom. This reveals how high the meteorite's path was at the location of the recording.
[+] [-] knowaveragejoe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gph|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tectonic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuahedlund|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnur|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thresh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|13 years ago|reply
apparently there was a risk that asteroid would intercept a satellite orbit. Too early to say, but it seems more likely than mere coincidence.
[+] [-] rquantz|13 years ago|reply
Note especially: 12 hours is a long way at 8 km/sec, so this object in Ruissia was on a very different orbit than 2012 DA14.
and also: Also, apparently moving east-to-west tho I can’t say for sure. Anything on the orbit of DA14 would be moving south-to-north.
Obviously info is still pretty thin, and this article seems pretty speculative. I'd wait a few hours before jumping to any conclusions.
[+] [-] tectonic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WestCoastJustin|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000f76f#...
[2] http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_METEORITE?S...
[+] [-] ANH|13 years ago|reply
Here's the lake: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=lake+chebarkul&hl=en&...
~40 miles due west of Chelyabinsk and a little south.
[+] [-] justin_vanw|13 years ago|reply
We need complete ICBM disarmament. They can keep their bombs and we can keep ours (for now), but we should restrict delivery systems such that there is a built in lag (bombers taking many minutes or hours to reach their targets), and can be recalled. ICBM's can be launched in a moment, and it is impossible to recall them or disable them once they are underway.
[+] [-] rodolphoarruda|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmastrac|13 years ago|reply
There's more information on this page here: http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2013/02/14/what-is-...
[+] [-] jessaustin|13 years ago|reply
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to believe anyway. Wasn't the rule that RT is considered accurate on any stories not involving Russia?
[+] [-] grinnick|13 years ago|reply
How fast does something have to be travelling to build up a delay like that?
[+] [-] knowaveragejoe|13 years ago|reply
The speed had more to do with the magnitude of the boom itself.
[+] [-] rdl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlgreco|13 years ago|reply
In uncertain circumstances, I think I would almost always prefer not being under concrete.
[+] [-] lutusp|13 years ago|reply
Well, since one brick structure collapsed, and since one's immediate impression was that it was an earthquake, running out into the street seem perfectly reasonable. The fact that it was a powerful sonic boom, not an earthquake, would be something I might figure out at my leisure only after running outside.
[+] [-] mapt|13 years ago|reply
This holds for a nuclear strike as well as a bolide.
[+] [-] OWaz|13 years ago|reply
It's hard to know what caused the boom if they didn't see something first.
[+] [-] thresh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zokier|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cabirum|13 years ago|reply