Chicken Little report: A 150 foot wide asteroid will buzz the Earth tomorrow at a distance of only 17,000 miles.
There have been numerous news articles about this fly-by for the last two weeks, all hyping the dangers of an impact that in this case simply won’t happen. A threat of an impact from an asteroid is real and should be dealt with, but the reporting here has at times been somewhat silly. Asteroid 2012 DA14 is not going to hit us as it goes by. All that will happen is that scientists will have take advantage of this opportunity to look at it.
Copied from another website.
dashcam video]
Possible meteor shower reported in eastern Russia
12:28am EST
Possible meteor shower reported in eastern Russia
12:19am EST
CHELYABINSK, Russia | Fri Feb 15, 2013 12:28am EST
(Reuters) – A powerful blast rocked the Russian region of the Urals early on Friday with bright objects, identified as possible meteorites, falling from the sky, emergency officials said.
“It was definitely not a plane,” an emergency official told Reuters, without elaborating. “We are gathering the bits of information and have no data on the casualties so far.”
No one was hurt in a meteor shower, an emergency official told RIA-Novosti. Local residents said they witnessed burning objects in the sky of the Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk regions.
A Reuters witness in Chelyabinsk reported hearing a huge blast early in the morning and feeling a shockwave in a 19-storey building in the town center.
*******
Don’t know if I could have kept driving….
ETA – DA 14 is still 12 or so hours out. Going to be interesting tonight.
******
UPDATE
MOSCOW (AP) — Fragments of at least one meteorite fell in the Chelyabinsk region some 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) east of Moscow, causing flashes in the morning sky and sharp explosions, Russian officials said Friday.
The office of the governor of the region in the Ural Mountains said in a statement that many calls about injuries and damage to buildings had been received. But there were no immediate confirmed figures or specific reports on damage.
Reports conflicted on the event: A spokeswoman for Russia’s Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, told The Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteorite.
The ministry said some fragments fell near the town of Satka, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) from the regional capital city of Chelyabinsk.
**********
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci … 2ei2j.html
**************
http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.co … elyabinsk/
Videos with explosion sounds….
First link didn’t copy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1W90i4nZZAQ