You may have heard about this by now, but a 10-ton chunk of space rock slammed into the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, and exploded, RT and dozens of other outlets have reported. The resulting blast was strong enough to injure 100s and shatter windows for miles:
15:01 GMT: Around 1,000 people have sustained injuries in Chelyabinsk due to the meteriote strike, says the Emergencies Ministry. 159 of them are children.
13:20 GMT: The number of people injured in the meteorite blast has risen to 950, Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Mikhail Yurevitch said.
13:10 GMT: Roscosmos said they did not track the meteorite that fell near Chelyabinsk. “Our ground facilities and, as I understand, those abroad too did not the monitor this celestial body,” the agency spokesman said.
13:02 GMT: Nearly 3,000 buildings in Chelyabinsk were damaged to varying extents by the meteor shower, including 34 medical facilities and 361 schools and kindergartens, the city administration’s website reported. The total amount of window glass shattered amounts to 100,000 square meters, the site said, citing city administration head Sergey Davydov.
Because we live in the future, you can actually watch the incident unfold. Here, found via Guardian:
“I didn’t understand what was going on,” said Galina Zaglumyonova, who lives in Chelyabinsk, a city of over a million people to the south of the Ural mountains.
“There was a big explosion and then a series of little explosions … our first thought was that it was a plane crash,” she said. The alarms of all the cars on the street went off after the loud bangs.
The Russian Academy of Sciences estimated that the meteorite weighed about 10 tons and entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 54,000 kph (33,000 mph), shattering about 30-50km (18-32 miles) above ground.
Russian officials said that they had already found where the main chunk of the meteorite had fallen, on the outskirts the city.
The experts are saying this is unrelated to today’s asteroid flyby. But, you know, some of us remember how The War of the Worlds starts, man.