Travel Blog

A meteor explodes over Russia and does a great deal of damage to buildings and explodes a lot of windows. As a result, it appears that 1100 people were hurt mainly from exploding glass windows that burst from the shock wave. All of this from a meteor the size of a bus and weighing 7000 tonnes. It was estimated to be traveling at 54,000 km’s or 40,000 miles an hour. It exploded 30 to 50 km’s in the air or about 30 miles high. All of this from such a small meteorite.

The small ones burn up in the atmosphere and are the shooting stars that all of us have seen at one time or other. But this was a relatively big one compared to the ones that burn up in the atmosphere. It was big enough to cause an explosion and a sonic boom that blew out a lot of windows many miles away.

Imagine the Damage

Imagine the damage this meteor would have done if this had happened over Moscow or New York. There would have been people killed from the breaking glass as a minimum. Many would have thought that a nuclear bomb had been set off.

Another meteor or actually an asteroid passed relatively close to the earth today as well. This one was 130,000 tons and passed within 28,000 km’s of the earth. For example, the space station by comparison is around 300 miles or 480 km’s above the earth. Some satellites were in the vicinity, but none were reported being damaged in any way.

Dirty Solar System – Meteor Explodes

Apparently we live in what is called a dirty solar system. There are lots of objects orbiting the earth, the other planets and the sun. The earth in its orbits sweeps many of these asteroids up in its atmosphere every day. There is little or no impact on the environment or the humans that live on the planet.

One day we may be hit by a large one. But this cannot be predicted. We have nothing at this time to deal with these asteroids. As a result if one is in the same orbit as the earth and we intersect with it there is a chance of a catastrophic event on earth.

This sort of thing is very remote and unlikely to occur in our life times. But when something like the event in Russia occurs everyone talks about it. As a result we wonder when the next one will hit the earth and where.

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