Yekaterina Pustynnikova / Chelyabinsk.ru via AP
A huge meteor flared through the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region, triggering a powerful shock wave that injured nearly a thousand people, blew out windows and reportedly caused the roof of a factory to collapse.
By Alan Boyle and Matthew DeLuca, NBC News
A meteor 15 meters across flared through the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region early Friday, triggering an atomic bomb-sized shock wave that injured nearly a thousand people, blew out windows and caused some Russians to fear the end of the world.
It was the largest reported fireball since the Tunguska event in 1908 ? an asteroid that flattened millions of trees over a wide area in Siberia ? according to NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Multiple amateur videos posted online showed the meteor?s flaring arc ? called a bolide by scientists ? as it crossed the western Siberia sky. Others from the scene included the sound of a loud boom, followed by a cacophony of car alarms. One video showed the hurried evacuation of an office building in Chelyabinsk.
?There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people?s houses to check if they were OK,? Chelyabinsk resident Sergey Hametov told The Associated Press. ?We saw a big burst of light then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud thundering sound.?
Another resident described the meteorite's ?flash."
"I was standing at a bus stop, seeing off my girlfriend," Andrei, a local resident who did not give his second name, told Reuters. "Then there was a flash and I saw a trail of smoke across the sky and felt a shock wave that smashed windows."
The fireball?s trail, which JPL reported was visible for about 30 seconds and said was ?brighter than the sun,? lit up one man?s morning commute. ?I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day,? Viktor Prokofiev told Reuters. ?I felt like I was blinded by headlights.?
Estimates of the number of people injured swelled throughout the day, with early reports putting those hurt around 500, with close to 100 people hospitalized. Chelyabinsk health official Marina Moskvicheva later said as many as 985 people had requested medical assistance in the city, many for injuries caused by flying glass. More than 200 children at Chelyabinsk schools, which had just opened, were among the injured, according to officials.
Russia?s interior ministry said the shock wave caused the roof of a zinc factory's warehouse to collapse, but that no fatalities were reported.
The fireball entered Earth?s atmosphere at 18 km per second, and released hundreds of kilotons of energy, JPL said. The blast's force was the equivalent of the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII ? many times over.
The astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City talks about the meteorite that hit the Ural Mountains area in Russia, saying such an event could happen "perhaps once a decade," and explaining that it was the shock wave as the meteorite entered the atmosphere and exploded that broke so much glass.
As many as 10,000 police have been mobilized to aid in recovery and to remove debris from the meteorite, which has been found in three areas around the Chelyabinsk region, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
The shallow angle at which the meteor crossed the sky over the city of Chelyabinsk contributed to the amount of damage, releasing energy equivalent to about 300 kilotons of TNT, according to Margaret Campbell-Brown, an astronomer and physicist at the University of Western Ontario.
?It?s like a sonic boom,? Campbell-Brown said of the rippling shock wave caused by the meteor. ?A sonic boom from a plane can shatter windows, but this sonic boom was much stronger than a plane.?
The CTBTO, which tracks nuclear disturbances in the Earth?s atmosphere, reported that 11 of its 45 infrasound monitoring stations recorded low-frequency sound waves as the meteorite broke up over the Ural mountains a little before 9:30 a.m. local time on Friday.
A photo provided by the Chelyabinsk regional police department showed a 20-foot hole in the ice covering a lake near the town of Chebakul. The local governor?s office said in a statement that fragments from the falling meteor had plunged into the lake, according to the Agence France-Presse.
In Russia and around the world, observers marveled at the fireball and its aftermath.
?I went to see what that flash in the sky was about,? resident Marat Lobkovsky told the Associated Press. ?And then the window glass shattered bouncing back on me. My beard was cut open, but not deep. They patched me up, it?s OK now.?
Resident Valya Kazakov told the AP that the brilliant flare and sudden explosion caused older women in his neighborhood to fear that the world was ending.
It was a once in a decade event, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, told TODAY on Friday, saying the impact was the physics equivalent of hitting a brick wall. ?When you hit a brick wall, you basically explode, and that?s what happened here, and it exploded in midair,? Tyson said.
There were no significant disturbances to public utilities or communications, Vladimir Stepanov of the Emergency Situation Ministry told ITAR-Tass. ?No serious consequences have been so far recorded,? Stepanov said, according to the news agency. ?There has been no disruption in the rail and air transport work.?
The fireball reports spread just hours before a 150-foot-wide asteroid was due to make a close flyby, coming within 17,200 miles of Earth. It's unlikely that there's any connection between the fireball and the encounter asteroid, known as 2012 DA14. However, a bright flash and explosion in midair would be consistent with the atmospheric entry and breakup of a large meteoroid.
Watch today's asteroid near miss online
If something the size of 2012 DA14 were ever to hit Earth, the scenario might play out in a similar way, but with a far more powerful impact. The European Space Agency posted a message on its Twitter account saying that there was no link between the Russian meteor and asteroid 2012 DA14.
?Asteroid 2012 DA14 will not impact Earth, but if another asteroid of a size similar to that of 2012 DA14 (about 150 feet across) were to impact Earth, it would release approximately 2.5 megatons of energy in the atmosphere and would be expected to cause regional devastation,? NASA said in a statement on its website.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Buildings were damaged and more than 400 people suffered injuries, most of them minor, when chunks of space rock plummeted into the Russian Urals this morning. NBC's Duncan Golestani reports.
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More about cosmic impacts:
The videos just keep streaming in from Chelyabinsk. You'll find lots of great clips and stills on?this Live Journal page?and?this WBVF wrap-up. Thanks to my Twitter pals for passing them along. ?
This report includes information from The Associated Press and Reuters.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the?Cosmic Log?community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space,?sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
This story was originally published on Fri Feb 15, 2013 5:05 AM EST
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