We caught news coverage last night of the asteroid known as 2012 DA14 that was due to pass Earth near Indonesia at a mere 17,200 miles away
today. At half the size of a football field, the asteroid could have flattened
He was so excited that he asked me to pull out the fragments
of the Sikhote Alin meteorite that I acquired a few years ago. This well-known 23 ton iron meteorite struck eastern Siberia 66
years ago this week on February 12, 1947. I became intrigued by meteorites
after reading about one that tore through the roof of a house in New Jersey in 2007.
Thinking the close-call with a huge asteroid was today’s big
story, we were shocked by news of a 10 ton meteorite that struck the town of Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains .
Video from dashboard cameras and mobile phones have been posted all over the
internet. The sound of the crash is audible in this video, and the shock waves
damaged hundreds of buildings and injured 1,000 people.
About those videos. NPR answers the question: Why did so many
Russian drivers get such great meteor videos? Apparently Russian drivers constantly
run dashboard cameras to capture evidence in the case of accidents involving
pedestrians purposely getting hit.
Speaking of scams, let’s see how quickly remnants of the Chelyabinsk meteorite will
be offered up for sale.
