Scientists: "Chelyabinsk meteorite" has become the largest in the last century
According to a joint team of scientists from the U.S. and Canada, as well as specialists from NASA, yesterday's "Chelyabinsk meteorite" has become the largest natural space object that fell to Earth in the last hundred years. Recall that yesterday meteorite caused a number of destruction in the Chelyabinsk region. As a result of its passage, injured more than 1,000 people, most of them got knocked out cuts from glass and window frames. According to experts, the meteorite was originally about 15 meters in diameter and weighed about 7,000 tons. Peter Brown, director of the Center for Planetary Studies at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, said that "the Chelyabinsk meteorite" as it enters the atmosphere over the territory of Kazakhstan and Russia had the energy comparable to 300,000 tons of TNT.
Brown says that these estimates are very rough and the reality of power in the meteorite could be much higher. "I think that the energy of a meteorite entering the dense layers of the atmosphere ranged from 300 to 600 thousand tons of TNT. convinced that the meteorite - the largest celestial body that falls on our planet since the time of the Tunguska meteorite in 1908, "- says a Canadian scientist. In 1908, the 40-meter meteor exploded above the Stony Tunguska River (Krasnoyarsk Territory), the explosion was a fire that destroyed 2,150 square kilometers of forest . Yesterday meteorite that fell in the 80 km from Chelyabinsk, about four times less than the asteroid 2012 DA14, which is a few hours ago, approached the Earth at 27,000 km.
Unlike "Chelyabinsk meteorite," 2012 DA14 was previously discovered by experts and the orbit of the flight has been determined accurately. During the flyby in 2012 DA14 geostationary orbital ring was not recorded any damage satellites. "Two of today's cosmic events have extraterrestrial origin, but they are completely unrelated to each other," - explained in the service of the NASA ballistic leading monitoring near-Earth space. NASA told that by means of satellite remote sensing scientists have found that the explosion "Chelyabinsk meteorite" occurred at 9:20:26 MSK February 15, when a space object was flying at a speed of 40,260 km / h. In addition, according to the trajectory initially meteorite should never have to face our planet.
"Tangent trajectory angle less than 20 degrees indicates that the object was most likely pulled the gravity of Earth," - says Brown. NASA also did not confirm the information presented that the meteorite allegedly was shot down by anti-aircraft. According to the monitoring, "Chelyabinsk meteorite" exploded by itself, unable to bear record heating due to friction with the earth's atmosphere. Rocket launches towards the meteorite has not been fixed, said NASA. "Can highly likely to assume that the meteorite had an irregular geometric shape that did not contribute to the aerodynamics and increased heating of the object during the flight. If the object was more correct aerodynamic shape, the it could be a danger far more important, "- says Brown. Canadian expert says that he has seen on the internet materials with a record flight of the meteorite, and judging by the characteristic smoke trail, the scientist believes the meteor broke up shortly before the fall of two or three relatively large fragments that have a quasi-spherical shape and flew a short distance from each other.
NASA believe that the explosion occurred at an altitude of about 15 kilometers from the Earth - almost strictly on Chelyabinsk - and then began to rapidly lose energy and fall. NASA told us that if we look at history and remember, even when in the earth's atmosphere, there is a significant meteor event, the previous similar event took place February 12, 1947 over the region of the Sikhote-Alin, in the Far East. Then in the Earth's atmosphere flew ferrous meteorite weighing 23 tons, which was part of a meteor shower weighing about 100 tons.
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