A meteor fireball lit up the morning sky over Chelyabinsk in central Russia, producing a shock wave that shattered windows and injured an estimated 500 1,000 people.** Although much of the parent object likely burned up in the atmosphere, Russian authorities say that several meteorite fragments have already been recovered, according to the Interfax news agency.
A preliminary analysis posted to the Web site of the Russian Academy of Sciences estimates that the object that struck Earth’s atmosphere was a few meters in diameter, “the weight of the order of ten tons (and) the energy of a few kilotons,” according to a Google translation.* That would make the Chelyabinsk event a fairly common occurrence, although such strikes usually occur over less-populated regions, not cities of more than a million people. On average, a four-meter asteroid hits Earth every year, delivering five kilotons of energy, Southwest Research Institute senior scientist Clark Chapman found in a 2004 analysis.
To read the original article: Hundreds Reported Injured in Blast from Meteor Strike over Russia [Video] | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
