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Concept
Chelyabinsk meteor
Summary
The Chelyabinsk meteor was a superbolide that entered Earth's atmosphere over the southern Ural region in Russia on 15 February 2013 at about 09:20 YEKT (03:20 UTC). It was caused by an approximately diameter, near-Earth asteroid that entered the atmosphere at a shallow 18.3 ± 0.4 degree angle with a speed relative to Earth of 19.16 ± 0.15 kilometres per second (69,000 km/h; 42,690 mph). The light from the meteor was briefly brighter than the Sun, visible as far as away. It was observed in a wide area of the region and in neighbouring republics. Some eyewitnesses also reported feeling intense heat from the fireball.
The object exploded in a meteor air burst over Chelyabinsk Oblast, at a height of about . The explosion generated a bright flash, producing a hot cloud of dust and gas that penetrated to , and many surviving small fragmentary meteorites. Most of the object's energy was absorbed by the atmosphere, creating a large shock wave. The asteroid had a total kinetic energy before atmospheric impact equivalent to the blast yield of 400–500 kilotons of TNT (about 1.4–1.8 PJ), estimated from infrasound and seismic measurements. This was 26 to 33 times as much energy as that released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima.
The object approached Earth undetected before its atmospheric entry, in part because its radiant (source direction) was close to the Sun. 1,491 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical treatment. All of the injuries were due to indirect effects rather than the meteor itself, mainly from broken glass from windows that were blown in when the shock wave arrived, minutes after the superbolide's flash. Some 7,200 buildings in six cities across the region were damaged by the explosion's shock wave, and authorities scrambled to help repair the structures in sub-freezing temperatures.
With an estimated initial mass of about 12,000–13,000 tonnes (13,000–14,000 short tons), and measuring about in diameter, it is the largest known natural object to have entered Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event, which destroyed a wide, remote, forested, and very sparsely populated area of Siberia.
Official source
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