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Meteorite crash in Russia

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Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#261

Post by WestCoastJustin »

lutusp wrote: post #113
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #7

I suspect the meteorite and earthquake are not related. The only recent earthquake that fits your description was M6.6 at 67.580°N 142.593°E [1], that's about ~2630 miles away from the reported meteorite impact in Chelyabinsk, Russia [2]. [1] http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000f76f#... [2] http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_METEORITE?S...

> I suspect the meteorite and earthquake are not related. It wasn't an earthquake -- it was a very powerful sonic boom, and yes, it was caused by the meteorite's passing. A similar sonic boom flattened hundreds of square miles in Tunguska in 1908, after a much larger space object fell there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

The title was changed. The original said there was a meteorite strike, followed by a 6.7 earthquake.

Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#262

Post by tobiasu »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #189
madaxe wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've got them peppered through the Urals. Lots of Cold War silos in that neck of the woods, and definitely active ABMs - saw them being driven just outside of astrakhan in the dead of night last year. Also, kaz is full of Russian military hardware. Baikonur for instance is definitely covered by ABMs, as to not do so would be an untenable risk as far as Russia is concerned.

Are you certain? This would be news to the world. For reference, here's what an ABM transporter looks like: http://www.ausairpower.net/PVO-S/53T6-SH-08-Gazelle-ABM-TL-1... Or this: http://www.ausairpower.net/PVO-S/Gorgon-ABM-Transporter-Load... Here's what a portable ICBM looks like: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Moscow_Pa... Or this: http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/images/rs24tel.jpg

That's not news :) The reason these things are extremely off-road capable is so they can move around in the woods and the enemy can't take them out in a first strike attack. The retaliation capability is what creates the (desired) balance between nuclear powers. Same with nuclear submarines. Hide and seek for "grown-ups"...

Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#263

Post by vitalique »

mietek wrote: post #257
madaxe wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, those would be the ones. Nice long convoy of them with APCs and tanks at the head and tail, cruising down the highway. Seeing this kind of stuff is par for the course out there though. Drove from Rostov na donu to Stalingrad and there were huge (and I mean HUGE) convoys of tanks cruising down to syria's neck of the woods. This isn't news to the world, it's just known stuff that isn't talked about as it doesn't m…

A satan? Can you explain?

SS-18 'Satan' is a NATO designation for Soviet/Russian ICBM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-18

Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#264

Post by davidcuddeback »

ovi256 wrote: post #227
DanBC wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I predict the ABM interception will turn out not to have occurred. I agree. > We don't have a surveillance system capable of detecting something that size until it hits atmosphere, NASA tracks at least 21,000 items above 10 cm diameter. Objects above 3 mm can be tracked by ground based radar. ( http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html#3 ) ( http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/ )

Almost all the items NASA tracks have orbits inside the solar system. This thing came out of nowhere (if it's orbiting around the Sun, it's so excentric that the orbit period is very long so it's like we saw it for the first time - if it's not orbiting the Sun, we did see it for the first time).

The NASA program in question is actually limited to objects in orbit around the Earth. (Orbital Debris is typically out-of-commission satellites and parts of rockets that are still in orbit around the Earth.) We can track objects as small as 10cm that are in orbit around Earth. (schiffern explains in more detail how.)

To track potentially hazardous astroids (PHAs), scientists use different methods and are not capable of detecting rocks as small as this one. That doesn't mean that it came from outside the solar system or that it has an eccentric orbit. It just means that it was too small to detect with current methods.

Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#265

Post by lutorm »

JPKab wrote: post #216
madaxe wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There probably is a nuclear blast in that mix. They stated that anti-missile systems intercepted it - the only thing with a hope in hell of reaching and destroying/breaking a meteor is the 53T6 Gazelle, which has a 10kt warhead.

Can someone please enlighten me, because I was under the impression that there is no ABM system on the planet capable of intercepting, let alone destroying, a large rock moving at 10km/second. I'm not saying its impossible, but it just seems to me that there is a lot of misinformation as to what actually happened.

I'm with you here. The RIM-161 standard anti-ballistic missile used by the US is quoted by wikipedia as having a speed of 9600km/h or 2.7km/s. Speeds in low-Earth orbit are about 7-8 km/s, objects entering from a solar orbit likely several times that. There is absolutely no way you would have significant success probability of intercepting it with a missile unless you knew the incoming orbit very precisely.

Just look at that dashcam footage: from entering the atmosphere to breakup was just a couple of seconds. On a very tangential orbit, no less.

Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#266

Post by danielweber »

JPKab wrote: post #216
madaxe wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There probably is a nuclear blast in that mix. They stated that anti-missile systems intercepted it - the only thing with a hope in hell of reaching and destroying/breaking a meteor is the 53T6 Gazelle, which has a 10kt warhead.

Can someone please enlighten me, because I was under the impression that there is no ABM system on the planet capable of intercepting, let alone destroying, a large rock moving at 10km/second. I'm not saying its impossible, but it just seems to me that there is a lot of misinformation as to what actually happened.

I'm skeptical there exists a system to automatically fire nukes at something and it has never had a false positive. Especially (chauvinistically) under control of the Russians through the fall of the the USSR.

I'm not sure a terrestrial power could do this without being way visible ahead of time.

Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#267

Post by chenster »

jevinskie wrote: post #207
creamyhorror wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a great dashcam video that captures the meteor arcing across its field of vision and lighting up the scene more brightly than the sun like a nuclear blast (first submitted to HN by dennisgorelik). I almost thought it was a hoax, and even tried to examine the video for signs that it was CGI. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJOJ6B2XOyA The guy doesn't even say anything for a long while, just starts speeding up. e…

Can anyone explain why I see so many dashcam videos from Russia?

Here's why from Mashable.com http://mashable.com/2013/02/15/why-russians-have-dash-cams-c...

Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#268

Post by lutorm »

soci wrote: post #180
mmastrac wrote: post #31

Here's a collection of insane videos of the event, some with the enormous sonic boom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIAm5hq8WWc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np_mpGYSBSA Can anyone translate what they are saying in the first one? You can get a good idea of the new videos being posted using YouTube's "last hour" filter: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%D0%BC%D0%…

A huge crater somewhere in the desert with fire flames everywhere. It's jaw dropping... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cT8vZ-7vxQ I just found this by using the "last hour" filter mmastrac suggested. EDIT: It doesn't seem to be a crater caused by a meteorite. By looking at the youtube video "cfn" (comment below) looks like it's a gas explosion in 2007. Still, amazing.

Yeah, an impact crater wouldn't look like that. It would look like one of the craters on the moon with large amounts of ejecta thrown out radially around it.

Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#269

Post by madaxe »

pm90 wrote: post #254
madaxe wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. A 10kt yield at altitude wouldn't leave much radioactivity above background at ground level. Also, this is the Russian military we're talking about. I don't think they'll fess up to detonating a nuke, no matter how small, in a populated area. We're talking about the same guys who absolutely definitely positively did not use nukes to build shipping canals. Oh, and I am a Physicist. MSc from an Ivy-League e…

We're talking about the same guys who absolutely definitely positively did not use nukes to build shipping canals Ok, I'm genuinely not sure whether you're being sarcastic. So _did_ the Russians use nukes to build shipping canals?

They experimented with it, publicly declared it a success, but said they weren't going to do it, and proceeded to use the tech on the far side of the country. Pechora-Kama I think was the original project. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but the locals I've met (Kazakhstan) insist that they did.

Re: Meteorite crash in Russia

#270

Post by jace »

obituary_latte wrote: post #184
soci wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge crater somewhere in the desert with fire flames everywhere. It's jaw dropping... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cT8vZ-7vxQ I just found this by using the "last hour" filter mmastrac suggested. EDIT: It doesn't seem to be a crater caused by a meteorite. By looking at the youtube video "cfn" (comment below) looks like it's a gas explosion in 2007. Still, amazing.

Wow. Hard to get a sense of scale, but it looks pretty big. Maybe a few hundre feet in diameter? Also, how much heat is needed to set friggin _dirt_ on fire?

That's natural gas seeping out of the ground.
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