This is a pretty realistic vision for the end of the world, right? , injuring close to 1,000 people. (Quick astronomy lesson: If it burned up in the atmosphere, it鈥檇 be called a 鈥渕eteor.鈥 When the debris actually reaches Earth, it鈥檚 a 鈥渕eteorite.鈥) Most importantly, no one died.
The meteorite exploded 50 miles west of Chelyabinsk (thankfully, since more than one million people live there), but the explosion caused a sonic boom, which . Most of the injuries were glass-related.
So, how big and how fast was this thing? According to The Atlantic Wire (which will ):
Russian scientists estimate that the meteorite weighed in at around 10 tons,聽, or about 20,000 pounds鈥攁nd that it hurtled toward Earth … at 33,000 miles per hour. And apparently 10 tons in space is chump change compared to聽, which is apparently the size of an Olympic swimming pool鈥攕pace agencies have carefully predicted the path of that beast many times over already.
More frightening than all those big numbers: Russian authorities say the event was completely unpredictable. And more frightening than that: this video.