SKYFALL: Hundreds injured as meteorite wreaks havoc in Russia's Ural Mountains

With a blinding flash and a booming shock wave, a meteor blazed across the western Siberian sky Friday and exploded with the force of 20 atomic bombs, injuring more than 1,000 people as it blasted out windows and spread panic in a city of 1 million, reports AP.

The meteorite that struck the Russian Chelyabinsk region at about 09:15 local time in the region about 1,500 km (930 miles) east of Moscow in the Ural mountains. The damage caused by the shock wave has been extensive. As reports continue to stream in, the number of people injured has been increasingly steadily and nearly 1,200, mostly caused by window glass blown out by the shockwave. The amateur videos and pictures illustrate the power that a small object entering the atmosphere at high speed can have. 

 

Estimated at about 10 tons, and about 2 meters across, this object (called a bolide when they are this bright) streaked through the sky at a speed of 54,000 kph (33,000 mph), and due to the extreme forces of atmospheric entry, broke apart between 30-50 km (18-32 miles) above the ground. Despite the coincident timing, the Russian meteorite has nothing to do with 2012 DA14, as the objects have decidedly different trajectories. A fragment from 2012 DA14 would have been moving from south to north, the path of the meteorite is from northeast to southwest. We will certainly learn more about the nature of this object when fragments from it are recovered and studied in laboratories.
 

Some meteorite fragments fell in Lake Chebarkul outside the town of Chebarkul, the regional Russian Interior Ministry office said. The crash left an eight-meter (26-foot) crater in the ice.

Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace Russia noted that the meteor struck only 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Mayak nuclear storage and disposal facility, which holds dozens of tons of weapons-grade plutonium.