Jump to content
Science Forums

Meteorite Hits Russia


Moontanman

Recommended Posts

Yes. For example.

 

That is a substantial upgrade! Taking the new diameter and assuming a 13 km/sec impact velocity, with a chondritic composition and density gives a yield of 130 kilotons. There's an online calculator somewhere that will do the same calculation. If you find it and get a different answer let me know - I think I've got my unit conversions and decimals in the right place, but I've never double checked my own Excel calculator. Incidentally if it was an iron (which I doubt) the energy yield would be double.

 

pretty good back-o-the napkin work there! :agree: had it been iron, it may not have broken apart and so localized the yield (big crater), but as i understand it the energy brung is a function of the mass & speed, and whether the brunger is stone or iron is a matter of how that energy is distributed.

 

from Spaceweather.com, February 16, 2013

:alien_dance:

UPDATE

...Researchers including Prof. Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario along with NASA experts have conducted a preliminary analysis of the event. "Here is what we know so far," says Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "The asteroid was about 15 meters in diameter and weighed approximately 7000 metric tons. It struck Earth's atmosphere at 40,000 mph (18 km/s) and broke apart about 12 to 15 miles (20 to 25 km) above Earth's surface. The energy of the resulting explosion was in the vicinity of 300 kilotons of TNT." (continued below)...

 

ps i wager that within 2 days we see a shirtless Putin hefting the lake rock overhead, or a reasonable facsimilie thereof. may the farce be with you. :alienhead: :slingshot:

Edited by Turtle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes. For example.

 

That is a substantial upgrade! Taking the new diameter and assuming a 13 km/sec impact velocity, with a chondritic composition and density gives a yield of 130 kilotons. There's an online calculator somewhere that will do the same calculation. If you find it and get a different answer let me know - I think I've got my unit conversions and decimals in the right place, but I've never double checked my own Excel calculator. Incidentally if it was an iron (which I doubt) the energy yield would be double.

 

 

You know how much I love "what ifs" so what if the large one that just missed the Earth had hit the moon, would it have had any significant effect on the earth?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Call me wrong, I don't find any of it funny.

 

You are wrong. I find much of it funny. :lol:

 

Funny to read "they" aren't telling us anything/everything. :shy:

Funny to read "they" are telling us but got it wrong. :kick:

Funny to read speculation like "what if there was no atmosphere". :doh:

 

Funny to see movie plots presented as evidence? :rotfl:

 

yada yada funny funny funny

 

You are far more likely to be sponged off your dashboard than the leading edge of a spacerock.

 

In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of being. :phones:
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am not "channeling" anyone; I am who I am.

 

Popeye?

 

I wonder what a 7000 metric ton blob of silly putty would do if it hit Mars and Mars had a dense methane atmosphere and Capricorn was in Uranus? :P

 

 

turtle turtle turtle... sigh... you know it's far more likely for an asteroid to hit the moon than it is for Capricorn to climb up uranus... B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

... There's an online calculator somewhere that will do the same calculation. If you find it and get a different answer let me know - I think I've got my unit conversions and decimals in the right place, but I've never double checked my own Excel calculator. Incidentally if it was an iron (which I doubt) the energy yield would be double.

 

We now return to our regular science programming. :coffee_n_pc:

 

I didn't run this particular event as I have no reason to doubt the experts, but here is an Earth impact calculator I have used in the past.

 

:earth: :ebomb: >> Earth Impacts Effects Program: Purdue University

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know the asteroid is large enough to wipe out London.

 

 

If it had been an iron meteorite the damage would have been a bit more significant I bet. Do we really know how common these small asteroids are? A 150 meter iron nickle asteroid would wreak havoc if it hit in the middle of the Pacific ocean. but a 15 meter one would do a lot of local damage and probably a significant tsunami to any nearby cost line in the ocean it hit at least.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If it had been an iron meteorite the damage would have been a bit more significant I bet. Do we really know how common these small asteroids are? A 150 meter iron nickle asteroid would wreak havoc if it hit in the middle of the Pacific ocean. but a 15 meter one would do a lot of local damage and probably a significant tsunami to any nearby cost line in the ocean it hit at least.

 

I just gave a link to a calculator. You can put in your own mass, speed, rock-type, angle of entry, distance from impact, and what material the impact target material is. (i.e. water & depth or rock type) Tweek just one of these variables while leaving the rest unchanged and the resulting "damage" differs. The page also contains a link to a PDF that gives all the formulas and assumptions used in the calculator.

 

Seems a far sail brighter course than endless unsupported speculation.

 

I just did a run on a 15m hard-rock at 18000kph on a 15º descent and got results that both agree and differ with what actually happened. Then again, maybe choosing "dense rock" was too dense. :shrug:

 

Your Inputs:

Distance from Impact: 1.61 km ( = 1.00 miles )

Projectile diameter: 15.00 meters ( = 49.20 feet )

Projectile Density: 3000 kg/m3

Impact Velocity: 18000.00 km per second ( = 11200.00 miles per second ) (Your chosen velocity is higher than the maximum for an object orbiting the sun)

Impact Angle: 15 degrees

Target Density: 2500 kg/m3

Target Type: Sedimentary Rock

Energy:

Energy before atmospheric entry: 8.59 x 1020 Joules = 2.05 x 105 MegaTons TNT

The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 1.4 x 106years

Major Global Changes:

The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.

The impact does not make a noticeable change in the tilt of Earth's axis (< 5 hundreths of a degree).

The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.

Atmospheric Entry:

The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 165000 meters = 543000 ft

The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 43700 meters = 143000 ft

The residual velocity of the projectile fragments after the burst is 16100 km/s = 10000 miles/s

The energy of the airburst is 1.69 x 1020 Joules = 4.03 x 104 MegaTons.

No crater is formed, although large fragments may strike the surface.

Air Blast:

What does this mean?

 

 

The air blast will arrive approximately 2.21 minutes after impact.

Peak Overpressure: 1.02e+06 Pa = 10.2 bars = 144 psi

Max wind velocity: 769 m/s = 1720 mph

Sound Intensity: 120 dB (Dangerously Loud)

Damage Description:

 

 

Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.

 

Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse.

 

Multistory steel-framed office-type buildings will suffer extreme frame distortion, incipient collapse.

 

Highway truss bridges will collapse.

 

Highway girder bridges will collapse.

 

Glass windows will shatter.

 

Cars and trucks will be largely displaced and grossly distorted and will require rebuilding before use.

 

Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and leaves.

 

Edited by Turtle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just gave a link to a calculator. You can put in your own mass, speed, rock-type, angle of entry, distance from impact, and what material the impact target material is. (i.e. water & depth or rock type) Tweek just one of these variables while leaving the rest unchanged and the resulting "damage" differs. The page also contains a link to a PDF that gives all the formulas and assumptions used in the calculator.

 

Seems a far sail brighter course than endless unsupported speculation.

 

I just did a run on a 15m hard-rock at 18000kph on a 15º descent and got results that both agree and differ with what actually happened. Then again, maybe choosing "dense rock" was too dense. :shrug:

 

Could the one that hit Russia have been a small rubble pile? Or was it too small to hold it's self together with gravity...

 

 

BTW, my point about the asteroid hitting the moon is that it would kick up an enormous amount of debris and some if not most of that would fall to earth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Could the one that hit Russia have been a small rubble pile? Or was it too small to hold it's self together with gravity...

 

BTW, my point about the asteroid hitting the moon is that it would kick up an enormous amount of debris and some if not most of that would fall to earth.

 

Good point Moontanman, there's a lot of stuff coming in atm and not just the Russian Meteorite.

 

http://www.today.it/mondo/cuba-meteorite.html

http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2013/02/16/in-last-2-days-fireballs-were-reported-all-over-the-world-sweden-netherlands-russia-japan-cuba/

http://thelatestworldwidemeteorreports.blogspot.com.au/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Could the one that hit Russia have been a small rubble pile? Or was it too small to hold it's self together with gravity...

 

"Rubble pile" sounds sciency, but it's a term of little to no practical scientific value. As fragments are recovered and analyzed in the coming days & weeks we'll get to hear the results and find out what it was made of and per se how it hanged together.

 

 

BTW, my point about the asteroid hitting the moon is that it would kick up an enormous amount of debris and some if not most of that would fall to earth.

 

Here's an article on Lunar meteorites, i.e. pieces of the Moon splashed off the Moon by impacts and ultimately falling to Earth. :moon: :earth:

 

>> :read: Lunar Meteorites

 

Here's a blip germane to your question:

...

Transfer to Earth

Most lunar meteorites are launched from the Moon by impacts making lunar craters of a few kilometers in diameter or less.[3] No source crater of lunar meteorites has been positively identified, although there is speculation that the highly anomalous lunar meteorite Sayh al Uhaymir 169 derives from the Lalande impact crater on the lunar nearside.[4][5]

 

Cosmic ray exposure history established with noble gas measurements have shown that all lunar meteorites were ejected from the Moon in the past 20 million years. Most left the Moon in the past 100,000 years. After leaving the Moon, most lunar meteoroids go into orbit around Earth and eventually succumb to Earth's gravity. Some meteoroids ejected from the Moon get launched into orbits around the sun. These meteoroids remain in space longer but eventually intersect the Earth's orbit and land.[6]

...

Edited by Turtle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...