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[orange]

Breakup of a minor asteroid/comet (meteor) in the Urals being reported.

Video 1 http://youtu.be/rajh1paSx1I
Video 2 http://youtu.be/7c-0iwBEswE
Video 3 http://youtu.be/b7mLUIDGqmw

Also, 2012 DA14 makes a close pass today (15 Feb).



Now maybe we can get some planetary defense funding!

[Ghost Hunter]

Will it mostly be rock you think, or will something useful come from it?

[Matoko]

I was looking at some of those earlier, yeah. Orbital kinetic energy weapons are pretty nasty...

[Mithfindel]

That factory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ2XXa5oFhw

[Esna Pitoojee]

Russia seems to attract these things. 


Also, the thing is apparently being estimated as weighing 10 tons. Did nobody's early-warning RADARs pick up a giant rock flying straight at the Earth?

[Lyn Farel]

10 tons is very small me thinks.

[Saede Riordan]

Russia seems to attract these things. 


Also, the thing is apparently being estimated as weighing 10 tons. Did nobody's early-warning RADARs pick up a giant rock flying straight at the Earth?

Space is big. Really really big. So mind bogglingly big that astronomers haven't even found all the near earth 10 kilometre asteroids. In fact, its believed that we may know about about less then 25% of all the NEOs.

[orange]

Also, the thing is apparently being estimated as weighing 10 tons. Did nobody's early-warning RADARs pick up a giant rock flying straight at the Earth?

For the most part, the Early Warning Systems are designed to look for objects with terrestrial points of origin, not city killers and smaller asteroids.

Yes 10 tons is very small, as in fits in a room small.  The close pass object (45 tons) today was identified roughly a year ago, this the designation 2012 DA14,  likely when it was already pretty close.

[Esna Pitoojee]

Perhaps I should have been clearer: 10 tons is, for objects flying on a low, fast trajectory near the Earth, quite large. It is, for example, roughly half a meter cubed assuming the meteor was made of Tungsten rather than some lighter composite in reality.

Half a meter cubed is big. I'd wager it's larger than most modern nuclear warheads - another class of object hurled on low, fast trajectories that we're generally quite interested in noticing.

EDIT: Actually, it apparently was detected on approach. A warning message sent out via SMS was mishandled, arriving after the event or not at all. 

[Matoko]

That, and if the internet rumors I heard are true, they even fired anti-ballistic missiles at it. Which hit. Of course, when you're dealing with a rock that has zero sensitive components or combustible materials, slapping it with a missile doesn't do much.

[Mithfindel]

I understand that Russian military confirmed not to have fired any ABMs. Which is probably a good thing, since their ABMs are nuclear-tipped the last I've heard. (The logic is that it's better to take out a big nuke with a small nuke than let it hit Moscow. Also solves the problem with accuracy.) It is assumed that Russian ABMs are placed around Moscow, so Chelyabinsk region might even be out of range.

Also, re-entry velocity of ICBMs is on the lines of 5 km/s, unless I am wrong. This thing was an order of magnitude faster by the reports.

On detecting: The Russians have stated that the meteor used the old air combat trick of approaching from the Sun, so it was practically impossible to notice such a small object before it was late.

On an off-topic note, Mr. Berlusconi probably had a bad week in Italy. He needs all the attention he can have to get elected again. Who'd guess that the Pope would resign, lil' Kim from Best Korea plays with nukes and then we have a well-photographed meteor, all within a week?

[Sakura Nihil]

From the reports I've seen, total energy dispersed in the event was somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 kilotons.

[Victoria Stecker]

Somewhere I read that this meteor detonated with more power than the nuke that the DPRK set off a few days earlier.

I find that amusing, as if the cosmos had seen NK set off the bomb, and decided to toss a pebble, when then made a bigger boom.

[Sakura Nihil]

Somewhere I read that this meteor detonated with more power than the nuke that the DPRK set off a few days earlier.

I find that amusing, as if the cosmos had seen NK set off the bomb, and decided to toss a pebble, when then made a bigger boom.

NK's nuclear test was somewhere in the 20 kT range, this one from the asteroid was about 500 kT.

It's akin to someone firing a nuclear-tipped, tactical artillery shell versus something that would be dropped by a bomber or carried on an ICBM to destroy a small city.

So basically, correct.

[Vincent Pryce]