Friday, February 15, 2013

the sky is falling!

i'm totally fascinated by this meteor impact in russia, mostly because there are multiple videos. the amazing thing is that several of the videos actually captured the sound of the impact. it looks like people came out to film images of other vapor trails in the sky left by other meteor fragments and thus were filming when one landed close to them. in the future cameras will be everywhere and everything will be filmed. we are almost in the future.

it was also spooky to wake up to this news because for weeks i have been reading about the projected "near miss" of asteroid 2012 DA14 that was projected to pass by earth on february 15th, today. my first thought when i saw video popping up of a meteor impact was that maybe DA14 didn't miss. if that meteor had hit, it would be a major calamity, much worse than the chelyabinsk meteorite. in any case, DA14 hasn't passed by us yet. so is this just some kind of crazy coincidence? (i.e. was this an unrelated meteorite that happened to hit on the very same day that DA14 was supposed to pass close) or were the meteorites that hit chelyabinsk fragments that had come off the larger meteor?

also, what is the deal with siberia and meteor impacts? first tanguska now this. sure, they are more than 100 years apart. but i just haven't heard of many other impacts in modern history.