Meteorite strike in Siberia

DoD Satellite Tracked Siberian Fireball that Might have Hit Earth
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 12:45 pm ET
14 October 2002



The U.S. Department of Defense has confirmed an apparent space rock that lit a fire in the night sky above a remote region of Siberia last month. Meanwhile, scientists struggle to pin down whether or not the object slammed into the planet.

Eyewitnesses in the Bodaibo district reported seeing a fireball race across the sky Sept. 24. Hunters later said they found a crater surrounded by burned forest. A seismic monitor in the region, according to the British NEO Information Center possibly recorded the event.


NEOs are Near Earth Objects, mostly asteroids that roam the region of space through which Earth orbits the Sun. When one enters Earth's atmosphere, it is termed a meteor. Smaller meteors burn up before reaching the surface and can be seen as "shooting stars." Objects as big as a car or bus generate so-called fireballs; a few small pieces, if anything, might reach the surface.

While looking for nukes

Now the U.S. Department of Defense has confirmed part of the Siberian meteor's fiery path through the sky, according to Peter Brown in the Meteor Physics Group at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

The DoD monitored the rock by satellite from 39 miles (62 kilometers) down to 19 miles (30 kilometers) above the ground. The agency attempts to track meteors and impacts in order to differentiate them from missiles and possible nuclear explosions.

Failing to properly identify a cosmic object as it slams into the planet could result in an unnecessary nuclear exchange, some military and asteroid analysts warn.

Evidence for an actual impact near Bodaibo has not been verified by scientists.

"Unfortunately, at present we do not know exactly what happen there," said Michael Nazarov of the Laboratory of Meteoritics Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry. "The Bodaibo [seismic] station recorded a signal which cannot be easily interpreted."

Other seismic recorders farther from the event recorded nothing, indicating that if the rock did survive its heated plunge through the atmosphere to hit the ground, the impact was relatively small.

Echoes of 1908

Ironically, the Bodaibo event may go down in history as a small-scale cousin to another one in 1908, also in Siberia. Then, a meteor thought to be about the size of a football field exploded above the mostly unpopulated Tunguska region. Trees were leveled for hundreds of miles around. The explosion was recorded by less sophisticated seismic equipment farther away, as compared to the Bodaibo event, Nazarov pointed out in a communication to CCNet, an electronic newsletter devoted largely to NEO research and discussion.

Nazarov said it would be difficult to find any possible Bodaibo crater in the remote region, since the event occurred at night and there are few witnesses to help scientists pin down the object's trajectory and possible impact location.

Scientists are eager to study impacts and any chunks of meteor that might be found in order to learn more about the compositions of their parent bodies. Some asteroids are more solid than others and thus more likely to reach the ground intact.

The threshold for an asteroid to be potentially devastating on a local scale is thought to be roughly the size of the 1908 Tunguska rock.

Just last week, an asteroid theorist announced new calculations showing there are fewer of these small "Tunguska" asteroids in Earth's vicinity and that they're likely to hit Earth about once every 1,000 years. Astronomers had thought such minor catastrophes occurred about once per century.

Larger rocks capable of widespread devastation hit the planet less frequently.

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Friday, June 20, 2003 Posted: 12:14 PM EDT (1614 GMT)

MOSCOW (AP) -- A group of scientists say they have found the spot in Siberia where a giant meteorite came crashing to Earth last year.

The researchers from the Kosmopoisk, or Space Search, research group told Rossiya state television Thursday that they believe a burned-out tract of taiga about 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) north of the city of Irkutsk is the spot where one or more meteorites fell on September 25.

Vadim Chernobrov, Kosmopoisk's coordinator, said the meteorite crash was "comparable to the force of a medium atomic bomb."

"In other words, this is a colossal historic event," he told Rossiya. "I'm simply happy that we were the first at the epicenter."

Chernobrov said that after examining the site, the research team believes two meteorites actually fell, not just one, as previously thought.

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LARGE CELESTIAL BODY FALLS IN SIBERIA
By Eduard Puzyrev
Russian Information Agency Novosti
October 16, 2002

MOSCOW -- This week a scientific expedition will make
for the site where on September 24 a large celestial
body fell in the taiga forest near the Bodaibo
settlement in the Irkutsk region in East Siberia.

On Wednesday the Astronomy Institute of the Russian
Academy of Sciences reported that, according to
witnesses, "a fiery trail accompanied by drone"
was observed during the fall. People in Bodaibo,
Balakhninski and other places located dozens of
kilometers away from the site felt Earth tremours
like in a quake. After that luminance could be
observed above the site from over 100 kilometers away.


"We have no doubt that a large meteorite fell on
September 24", said a staffer of the Astronomy
Institute.

According to him, the celestial body is unrelated to
unidentified flying objects as proved by the fact that
the other day the United States Department of Defense
published information saying that on September 24 an
American satellite group registered the entry of a
bright body into the Earth atmosphere at an altitude
of 62 kilometers.

The American military say that, approaching the Earth,
the body exploded 30 kilometers above it at 58.21
Northern latitude and 113.46 Eastern longitude.
Specialists say the yield of the explosion was
equivalent to 200 TNT.

"It is clear that a piece of a meteorite unburnt in
the Earth atmosphere has fallen near Bodaibo", said
the Astronomy Institute.


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That's what i found


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"Failing to properly identify a cosmic object as it slams into the planet could result in an unnecessary nuclear exchange, some military and asteroid analysts warn."

Is there such thing as a "necessary" nuclear exchange? What happens when a meteorite of this magnitude impacts near the disputed territory around Kashmir? Both India and Pakistan are "club members" (both posess nuclear weapons).

Peace

 

Maan i'd love to see that! If ever it's found that a planetkiller asteroid or civilization ender is gonna strike earth, i'm gonna try to find out where, go there, smoke mad bud and watch the show. I'd like to find out where ground zero would be and lay there all stoned and watch it come striaght at me, that would be sweet!

I almost got hit by a small meteorite one night, it came 15 feet from drilling me i the head, it was so clsoe i felt intense heat from it, and i could smell it burning. I was walking along a road that ran by the edge od a stripmine by where i live and it came outta the sky right at me, i ducked and kept looking at it and it came screaming by my head burning and making a hissing sound and impacted in the bottom of the stripmine.

Another time i saw a water impact when what i estiamte to be a basketball sized (it's hard to tell how big) landed in a small lake (big pond, really) and for an instant the whole lake was glowing at the point of impact.

PEace