Significant meteorite explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia

A large object which appears to be a meteorite has exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, located in the Ural mountains near the border with Kazakhstan. The incident took place at approx. 9:30am local time (3:30GMT). Latest news indicates that over 400 people have requested medical attention. While information at this early stage is a bit sketchy, it would appear that the blast from the object exploding in the air may be the cause of the majority of the injuries, rather than injuries associated with direct hits from meteorite fragments. RT News (Russian news channel available on Sky) showed the wall of a factory blown down along with damage to windows and doors of apartments. However, it was also stated that no objects were found at this stage. Due to the common use in Russia of on-board video cameras in cars, the event has been captured on video from various angles. More details may be seen here:
rt.com/news/chelyabinsk-meteorite-witness-report-285/

While this event is not an early arrival of 2012DA14, it remains unclear at this stage whether the event in Russia is caused by a random object or a fragment associated with 2012DA14.

Video of the meteor entering the atmosphere - mashable.com/2013/02/15/meteorite-hits-russia/

also - sound of explosion: www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2013/0...ning-in-chelyabinsk/

WOW!

Phil.

PS - judging from the direction of travel, it looks like this object came from the general direction of the sun. 2012DA14 is heading in from the west so they were probably not an associated pair bound together by gravity.

Just reading about this now. Lots of sites have the news.

This is really is unprecedented hitting a major population centre. Apparently NORAD has tracked multiple meteorite re-entry events in the last 24 hours.


This site has a large collection of videos and pictures.

zyalt.livejournal.com/722930.html

Surely one of the greatest coincidences of all time!

Fermidox wrote: Surely one of the greatest coincidences of all time!

Certainly is! (but don't call me Shirley )

Lots of new video appearing on YouTube - just Google "meteorite hits russia" and click the YouTube link at the top of the page.

Latest update via RT News:
rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/
Looks like they have found the impact sites.