Russian Meteorite

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This happened early in the morning when people were on their way to work.  I think this would be more effective than ten cups of coffee.

The current NASA estimates are that this was a stony meteorite of about 55 feet in diameter, weighing approximately 10 tonnes or 10,000 tonnes (depending on the source, anyone with a pointer to a definitive value please let me know), and traveling about 46,000 miles per hour. The energy of the resulting blast is estimated now at 500 kilotons.  There is no explosive involved, this is the kinetic energy of it’s motion being dissipated as it is slowed by atmospheric friction.

It’s interesting that the Russians checked for radiation and continued to check throughout the day.  Given the size of the shock wave being roughly equivalent to the largest submarine carried nukes we possess, I can see where they might be concerned that perhaps this wasn’t natural.

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