Here’s a whole collection of different video recordings of the meteorite that streaked over the Ural Mountains in Russia early this morning (so, in the middle of last night for those of us in American timezones), breaking up in the atmosphere, leaving an impressive contrail, and causing a sonic boom that caused a wide radius of broken windows and damaged buildings. There have been no reported deaths so far, but many folks have sought medical attention for broken glass related injuries.
A meteorite strike as flashy and dramatic as this one would be news on any day, but this isn’t even 2012 DA14, the asteroid scienctists and astronomers were expecting to buzz very close to the Earth’s atmosphere this afternoon. Naturally, this is leading a lot of folks to wonder if the two might be connected.
Fortunately, both NASA and the European Space Agency were quick to establish that the two objects have no connection, and I suppose if you can’t take their word for it, I’m not sure whose you would take. Oh, and if you’d like to hear what a sonic boom sounds like when it’s made by a billions of years old conglomeration of space rock, just watch this:
It’s really too bad that words like awesome and terrific have lost their original context of “awe-inspiring, exciting, and terrifying at the same time.” As I heard Neil Degrasse Tyson say on NPR this morning: “Asteroids are nature’s way of asking ‘How’s that space program coming along?'” Our buddies at Geekosystem will be following the story more closely over the course of today, so you should definitely check them out.
(videos via HyperVocal.)
