700 injured as meteorite falls in Russian Urals

Coalmine

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700 injured as meteorite falls in Russian Urals

A major Russian city in Siberia had a miraculous escape on Friday when a meteorite streaked above it, shattering windows, shaking the ground and injuring hundreds of people.

Amateur videos taken in and near Chelyabinsk in the Urals Mountains captured an incredibly bright fireball speeding across the sky shortly after 9 a.m. local time, leaving a thick white smoke trail and followed by several powerful blasts.

Eyewitnesses said the fireball was brighter than Sun, hurting eyesight and causing headaches.

The Russian Academy of Sciences estimated that a 10-tonne meteorite entered the atmosphere over Siberia at a speed of 15-20 km a second and exploded into fragments at a height of about 50 km above the earth.

The fragments hit several regions of Siberia and Kazakhstan, with Chelyabinsk, a city with a population of 1.12 million people about 1,500 km east of Moscow, suffering largest damage. Meteorite shockwaves blew out windows in hundreds of multi-storeyed apartment houses, hospitals, schools and sports facilities and damaged several industrial plants in the city.

No fatalities have been reported so far, but the number of injured people topped 700 by Friday evening, including 160 children, in Chelyabinsk alone. Most injuries were caused by flying glass.

Authorities declared a state of emergency in Chelyabinsk region and deployed 20,000 emergency response personnel to ascertain damage and help the injured people. Municipal services are struggling to replace 100,000 sq. m of smashed windows as temperatures in Siberia are well below zero Celsius.

Fortunately for Chelyabinsk the fragments of the meteorite missed the city and reportedly crashed in a thinly populated area about 200 km away. The military found three meteorite impact sites, including a six-metre crater near Lake Chebarkul and a large hole in the ice on the lake.

Chelyabinsk region has several nuclear and chemical industry facilities, including the Mayak fuel reprocessing factory and a huge nuclear waste storage. Emergency officials said the facilities were safe and background radiation levels remained low. Mayak was the site of a major nuclear catastrophe in the 1950s, when a blast in a liquid waste tank caused massive radioactive contamination in the region.




In this frame grab made from a video done with a dashboard camera, on a highway from Kostanai, Kazakhstan, to Chelyabinsk region, Russia, provided by Nasha Gazeta newspaper, on Friday.

AP In this photo taken with a mobile phone camera, a meteorite contrail is
 

Coalmine

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is this the same meteorite that is going to pass today
 

kseeker

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Russian Meteor: Conspiracy Theorists Claim Meteorite Was Shot Down By Military Missile (VIDEO)



The tale of the meteorite which smashed into an Eastern Russian town on Friday seems strange enough - but now the internet is aflame with conspiracy theories that it was actually shot down by a Russian missile.

More than 950 people were injured when the meteor streaked through the sky at about 9.20 am local time in the Chelyabinsk region, near the Ural mountains.

The 10 tonne rock caused widespread panic as it tore through the sky, before an enormous explosion - thought to be a sonic boom - shattered windows and brickwork.

A crater about six metres across has now been found on the shore of a nearby lake.

But the story grew even stranger, after a Russian news website published claims that the meteorite was shot down by the government to prevent further harm.

Russia Today reported that an air defense unit at the Urzhumka settlement may have blown the meteorite to pieces at about 20 km above the Earth.

The rumour originated with the local Znak newspaper, quoting a military source - though it cannot and has not been verified.

The source said the vapor condensation trail of the meteorite showed it had been intercepted by a missile.

The regional Emergency Ministry denied the report, but it was too late for that corner of the internet dedicated to conspiracy theories, who latched onto the story almost immediately.

An account claiming to be part of the hacking collective Anonymous repeated the claims, which quickly spread:

Anonymous @CIApressoffice
Anonymous
Meteorite crash in #Russia: A missile salvo blew the #meteorite into pieces at an altitude of 20 km: Meteorite hits Russian Urals: Fireball explosion wreaks havoc, up to 1,200 injured (PHOTOS, VIDEO) — RT News
@_GrizzyGrant
Grant McKinley
Just read Russia launched a missile to destroy the meteorite before impact. Wouldn't that create multiple, smaller fragments? #Russialogic
February 15, 2013 8:04 am via web Reply Favor
However it is worth maintaining a sense of proportion: in the same story repeating the missile claims, Russia Today remarks that a previous incident of a high-powered meteor impact in Russia in 1908 was explained by both "a black hole passing through Earth and the wreck of an alien spacecraft".
 

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