Russian meteorite 1,000 times bigger than originally thought!

Well if anyone needed any more evidence to go on that NASA is at best incompetent and at worst disinformationistic, here you go. "Ah we here at NASA calculate the Russian meteor to be x tons...No, wait! 1000x tons!" Total joke. Another credibility-shattering blow to "space science".

Originally posted by Urantia1111
Well if anyone needed any more evidence to go on that NASA is at best incompetent and at worst disinformationistic, here you go. "Ah we here at NASA calculate the Russian meteor to be x tons...No, wait! 1000x tons!" Total joke. Another credibility-shattering blow to "space science".

The 10 ton figure was actually attributed to russian scientists, not NASA - which was suggesting 10,000 tons at the same time.

Even Fox got that right in the article linked to teh OP:

When a hunk of rock raced out of the morning skies over Russia on Friday and exploded with nearly 500 kilotons of energy, early size estimates from the Russian Academy of Sciences that were carried by the Associated Press, Reuters and other news wires pegged it on the small size, with a weight of about 10 tons.

how does it feel to be less accurate than Fox News??

The only place people think NASA is omnipotent or infallible is in conspiracy circles or screen writers for movies. NASA knows more than most about our solar system but they are still scratching the surface and they admit that. The budget for 1 month in Afghanistan exceeds the total budget for the past 30 years running NASA. They are actually doing quite a bit with very little.

reply to post by Urantia1111

NASA didn't provide the low estimate. They waited for more data.

reply to post by Helious


That is pretty bizarre to say the least. Typo maybe? Too bad we don't have more.

As for Tunguska, I doubt it's a meteorite. There's a couple more explanations fort that explosion but I'll have to revise. One of them is this.
-
Tunguska/Tesla Connection

reply to post by Helious

I have yet to hear that they have taken a good close look in the direction the Russian meteor has come from to determine if anything else is incoming. I would feel much better if and when they say it was an isolated rock.

It would be impossible for them to determine that, especially when dealing with objects this small coming in from the direction of the Sun.
If it makes you feel any better, asteroids that are capable of doing real damage are much more detectable.

Fact is, no matter how unlikely it is, whatever event sent that meteor in motion to the Earth could of sent other fragments, larger or smaller. It would be nice for somebody with a very large telescope to tell me no more fragments are expected

It would be nice, but it's not possible. I guess this is the unpredictability of that thing called life -- you could be hit by a car, a piano, or a meteor with no notice whatsoever. I would worry most about the car. Meteors are almost never fatal, and, as I said, truly destructive ones are able to be detected at great distances.

Originally posted by ausername
reply to post by Chrisfishenstein

 

The damage was minimal because it exploded about 20 miles above the ground. There could have been a far worse outcome. Were you disappointed?

When meteors explode in the air like that what happens to all the explosive energy,shockwaves etc that is being directed up into the atmosphere, does it go into space or is it somehow reflected back down to the ground?

reply to post by Tardacus


Shockfronts dissipate with distance. If they're large/high enough, then they will still dissipate as the atmosphere thins at higher altitudes. There is no medium for a shockfront to travel in space.

for comparison ...




the crater is

It is about 1,200 m (4,000 ft) in diameter, some 170 m deep (570 ft), and is surrounded by a rim that rises 45 m (150 ft

the meteor was
300,000 tons

The object that excavated the crater was a nickel–iron meteorite about 50 meters (54 yards) across, which struck the plain at a speed of several kilometers per second.

Impact energy has been estimated at about 10 megatons.

Modeling initially suggested that the meteorite struck at a speed of up to 20 kilometers per second (45,000 mph), but more recent research suggests the impact was substantially slower, at 12.8 kilometers per second (28,600 mph).

meteor crater, arizonai

reply to post by Helious


thats because they used Tesla death ray. And it vaporized the asteroid into a trail of burning fire.

Just my assessment. as far as i know russias the only one that has it up and operating..

Originally posted by Human_Alien
This is why I think science via the media is a joke. So they just get to 'claim' and we just believe then start quoting them as if it were true?

I was shaking my head when I was reading about the meteor here in Florida
They claim "The one seen over South Florida landed in the ocean and was likely between the size of a golf ball to a soccer ball"

And I ask; based on WHAT are they coming up with these sizes?

They are just a bunch of PhD's in lab coats, taking guesses then passing it off as superior scientific knowledge and then the minion regurgitates it.

edit on 19-2-2013 by Human_Alien because: (no reason given)

i feel the same way man. it makes me so confused how can an educated guess become truth in an instant?

reply to post by ausername


I always thought an airburst was more destructive then a direct impact?
Blast radius and all that.

reply to post by Lifespan


Blast radius increases, but the distance the blast has to travel also increases, causing it to dissipate.
Also, the principle that an airburst is worse is typically for nuclear weapons, which are quite different from meteors. Though the damage from even a nuclear detonation at an altitude of 20 km would be less than a surface detonation.

Originally posted by Lifespan
reply to post by ausername

 

I always thought an airburst was more destructive then a direct impact?
Blast radius and all that.

Only in some circumstances and for some purposes, and if close enough to the "target".

A shock wave in air is good for knocking down above-surface buildings, vehicles and people that are not armoured or hardened in any way. And for conventional artillery an air-burst gives better shrapnel lethality.

But an air burst of anything at all at about 27km high is not going to be all that dangerous at all...except for falling glass!

remember that the shockwave is sheprical - it goes out in all directions, and its strength suffers from the inverse-CUBE law - if you go twice as far away the shockwave is only 1/8th as intense. Put alternatively if you were only half the distance away the shock would be 8 times as much!

so it is very rapidly attenuated by distance - this is why massive nuclear weapons do not have destructive radii in the same proportion to their yeild compared to smaller weapons - eg see this summary of effects on wiki - note the radius of the 1kt effects vs the 20 Mt ones- the ratio is not the same as the ratio of the yield (which is 20,000:1)

Originally posted by CrypticSouthpaw
reply to post by Helious

 

Just my assessment. as far as i know russias the only one that has it up and operating..

Really? you know this?? got any evidence of that to share with the rest of us, or is it too secret for the rest of the world to know about?

Originally posted by Helious


So, it went from being an estimated 10 tons to 10,000 tons? How could this be exactly?

I heard initial estimations that the meteor was 2m in size but this just can not be the case at all if it was actually 10,000 tons. Something about this doesn't make a whole lot of sense on the surface.

Wouldn't something of that mass and velocity have caused a lot more damage and loss of life? I'm no astrophysicist but 10,000 tons seems like a lot to me.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

well, if there's one thing I've learned around here is a contradiction in hours old news report means only one thing

illuminati !!!

reply to post by syrinx high priest

well, if there's one thing I've learned around here is a contradiction in hours old news report means only one thing

What would be the benefit of that?

Originally posted by magma
reply to post by syrinx high priest

 

well, if there's one thing I've learned around here is a contradiction in hours old news report means only one thing

What would be the benefit of that?

He's referencing Sandy Hook threads FYI.

That said, I have done some reading and I'm still confused about a couple things. It would appear that there was contact with the surface as evidenced by the semi massive hole in the Russian Lake. How exactly could this rock have exploded before it hit the surface and also hit the surface?

Were there fragments after the explosion in the atmosphere that made it to Earth? I have been looking around on line and it would seem nobody really has the answers to these questions either and there also seems to be some pretty odd speculation about shooting the thing out of the sky and other odd assertions.

I personally don't think it would even be possible to mostly vaporize something weighing 10,000 tons with our current technology so I assume it happened through natural process but then again, what do I know.

reply to post by Helious


Yes, when a meteor airbursts, fragments tend to make it to the ground. It's not a vaporizing explosion, it's just a structural failure due to heat and stress. Most of what remains is so small that it stays airborne until it precipitates in rain or snow, though there are bound to be larger fragments that do make it to the ground. In this case, one happened to be large enough to punch a decent-sized hole in the lake.

Originally posted by Helious

Russian meteorite 1,000 times bigger than originally thought Read more: www.foxnews.com...

www.foxnews.com

Later in the evening, after studying infrasound data from stations around the world, NASA released a new estimate revising that first guess upward by a thousand-fold: The meteorite actually weighed closer to 10,000 tons, scientists said.

Read more: www.foxnews.com...

(visit the link for the full news article)

edit on 19-2-2013 by Helious because: (no reason given)

Foxnews huh. Somehow I need more evidence.