Chelyabinsk meteor explosion was a planetary defense wakeup call
. While there are currently no known asteroids that are on a collision course with Earth, unexpected objects routinely crash into the atmosphere. And in the case of Chelyabinsk, sometimes asteroids can arrive undetected through blind spots in our detection capabilities.
A view of the wall of a local zinc plant that was damaged by a shockwave from a meteor in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, on February 15, 2013. helped scientists determine that the blast was indeed incredibly powerful."This was a big event, the largest one we've ever actually measured," Chodas said."On our fireballs page, which measures all the major impact events, this was by far the largest. So that was just an amazing experience, I have to say.
Chodas added that it's fortunate that the event was initially recognized for what it was and not misconstrued as some sort of military event. Chelyabinsk Oblast, the administrative region of which the city of Chelyabinsk is the seat, is home to the"But of course, it was way bigger than you would expect from any sort of attack on the city. So I think I'm happy that that was the initial reaction, and that the correct initial reaction was that it was a natural event," Chodas said.
A hole, thought to be made by the fragment of the meteor in the ice of Chebarkul Lake is seen on Feb. 16, 2013, some 50 miles from Chelyabinsk, Russia. The local government reported more than 1,100 people injured, mostly by flying glass broken by the shock wave of the meteor explosion.
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