Russian Meteor

[Griswold]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/15/world/europe....html?hpt=hp_c1

I watched the videos taken of this thing shooting through the atmosphere and if they hadn't stated that it was a meteor I would have thought that it was a missile streaking through the sky.

What do you guys think? if you hadnt have known it was a meteor what would you have thought looking at this bright object streaking through the sky?

[Legend]

dam

[Jablonski]

Did any one else have trouble watching the video with Bill Nie the science guy with a straight face? I know i did.

[T. Brown 1st MRB]

Some important info regarding this event:

• This was a meteorite, NOT AN THE ASTEROID DA14.
• This impact event (Yes it has impacted, or rather a piece of it impacted). IS NOT RELATED TO DA14. DA14 is the asteroid scheduled to pass over Earth later today.
• The video going around of what appears to be a giant impact crater is fake. It is a video of a natural gas vent that is on fire called Derweze.
• Russia did not intercept the meteor with *anti-air anything. More info coming here: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comment..._be_related_to/

  Source: Phil Plait is a very respected phD holding astronomer and has been blogging about astronomy for years.

  8:10 GMT: Oleg Malkov, an aerospace scientist at Moscow State University, told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper that the meteorite went undetected by space scanners, likely because it was coming from the direction of the Sun. "We can only register stones coming from the direction of the night sky," he explained. Malkov confirmed that the meteor shower in the Urals was not connected to the 2012DA14 asteroid that will approach Earth in a few hours.

***VOLUME WARNING*** This is a fairly high quality video depicting either a sonic boom from its high speed of atmospheric entry, OR a result of it exploding HIGH up in the atmosphere (this is most likely the case due to the differential propagating sound taking that long to reach those just below the streak, signifying an explosion high in the atmosphere that would take a bit of time to reach us.