Meteor shower causes damage, injuries in Russian Urals

[E. Q. Taft]

The joke I heard was going around in the Urals was that this was the meteor that was supposed to end the world in 2012, but it was delayed by the Russian postal service.

[ganzfeld]

It's true that this probably happens every so often without being detected. However, ones of this magnitude would often be detected, not through seismography or satellite, which do suffer from the problems mentioned, but through infrasound monitoring, which has taken place since the 1950's. There have been several candidates over that time and it's fairly certain that some have gone unnoticed or unsung. In any case, yes, that's why I said "known".

[Spam & Cookies-mmm]

Originally Posted by E. Q. Taft

NASA says the meteor was was 15 meters in size before entering the atmosphere, and that it appears to have been moving north to south, the opposite direction from asteroid 2012 DA14.

They've revised that estimate.

The estimated size of the object, prior to entering Earth's atmosphere, has been revised upward from 49 feet (15 meters) to 55 feet (17 meters), and its estimated mass has increased from 7,000 to 10,000 tons. Also, the estimate for energy released during the event has increased by 30 kilotons to nearly 500 kilotons of energy released.

Ten thousand tons. Twenty million pounds.

[RichardM]

Originally Posted by A Turtle Named Mack

Satellites - most 'see' nothing, as they are relay stations for communications.

Weather satellites cover most of the area of the world including the oceans because that is where storms come from. Also, there is a series of satellites designed to look for flashes on earth as from rocket launches. These probably are not aimed at the Pacific ocean. But they might be.

I am not sure about seismographs although I remember reading the 1903 incident was so detected.

ETA: I was right that seismographs have been used to detect meteorite impacts for many years: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1974Metic...9..223N

[GenYus234]

Yes, but is a weather satelite going to have the resolution to spot an incoming meteor and be continuously taking images? Or will it take one relatively low resolution image per every 15 minutes, possibly missing the meteor altogether? And if it does catch it, will the person reading the image notice the meteor and recognize it as such or will they take it for a contrail or other non-meteoric thing.

[Tootsie Plunkette]

How I Meteored Your Motherland from The Daily Show.

The cows owe me a new keyboard.

[ganzfeld]

The larger problem of satellite and seismography is the noise. One study using satellite data was reporting house-sized comets falling daily. This grew into a whole theory (I want to say crackpot theory but the original proponents weren't at all so) that still makes the rounds every now and then but, long story short, it was just camera noise. Similarly, small tremors happen daily all over the earth. By contrast, infrasound signatures of meteorites are much more easily recognized. This case, since it was observed in so many different ways, should allow that data to be reviewed to confirm whether anything larger has made waves in the atmosphere during the past half century.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by Tootsie Plunkette

How I Meteored Your Motherland from The Daily Show.

The cows owe me a new keyboard.

The first time I watched it, I thought "OMG those poor cows they. . . oh. Never mind."

[GenYus234]

The best part of those Russian dash cam clips is that the horse is using the crosswalk.

[Lainie]

The zebra crossing, in fact.

[Spam & Cookies-mmm]

Just so you know who's throwing rocks at us...

Finally we want to classify the meteoroid by comparing its orbit with that of already known asteroidal families. To achieve this goal we have plotted in an a−e diagram the orbital elements in the random sample and compare them with that of already known Asteroids belonging to the Apollo, Amor and Atens families. ... According to this Figure the Chelyabinsk meteoroid belonged inequivocally to the Apollo family of Asteroids.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5377v1.pdf