But Brown says studying the Chelyabinsk impact will help scientists prepare people for future impacts by more accurately predicting potential damage. The rate of these impacts is an order of magnitude higher than previously thought - higher than surveys of all the rocks floating around in the solar system would suggest. While studying this latest event, scientists reviewed similar impacts from the past few decades and discovered something odd. So it's possible the Chelyabinsk meteor is a chip that broke away from this larger rock. A known asteroid more than a mile-wide has a nearly identical orbit. Researchers also have a possible lead on the meteor's origin. Like a new moon, the asteroid was illuminated from behind, so it was nearly invisible. The 1,200-pound stone was recovered from the lake bed last month. The largest fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteor punched a hole in the frozen surface of Lake Chebarkul. "You know the odds of this happening were so incredibly low, for me to see it in my lifetime, during my career - it's negligible." "I was almost in shock for the first 24 to 48 hours," says Brown, a professor at Western University in London, Ontario. 15, the asteroid collided with the Earth's atmosphere and became a fiery meteor.Įleven hours later, as the sun rose over Ontario, physicist Peter Brown turned on the television and heard the news. Shortly after the sun rose over central Russia on Feb. But this particular asteroid was exceptionally unlucky. It all started with a small asteroid - one of the millions of unremarkable gray rocks circling the sun. Now, in large part by poring over these videos, physicists have been able to estimate the power of that explosion, calculate the exact trajectory of the meteor and figure out why we didn't see it coming. Hundreds of personal videos captured the fireball's flight - and that means you can watch the spectacle from almost any vantage point on YouTube. Nine months ago a 12,000-ton meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, a Russian city with 1.1 million residents.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |