Anyone happen to catch the video of the meteor strike?

stone--you stole rh's thunder

LOL...Figured I post it before 1:00 PM.

I wonder if the RED phone in the White House rang.

Nice video. I wonder if the Meteroite Men are on their way.

Meteroid - rock in space
Meteor - rock in atmosphere
Meteorite - rock struck Earth

One of the coolest videos I ever saw. Scary but beautiful.

OK...Meteorite it is.
Just as long as none hit the OP while I'm floating down a river or MA 9 this summer.

That smoking burning hole at 2:13 in the video is incredible. That video is the only place I have seen that shot. I wonder ...

Did you see the show about asteroids/meteors striking Earth last night? I think it was an episode of the Universe. Might have been on at the time this thing came in.

Wow! I actually saw something similar to what is shown in the video that Stonefish posted, though on a much smaller scale, while night fishing at Lake Lenice.

i found this kinda interesting...

The meteor was not shot down. It was traveling at 35,000 - 40,000 MPH and was the size of a small delivery truck and at low altitude when it exploded (10 - 15 miles off the deck). To compare, the Patriot Missile travels Mach 3+ or 2,250 - 2,500 mph. No missile system in the entire galaxy could have intercepted that meteor. Period. There was no warning. Period. The distance from the moon to Earth is 238,857 miles / 40,000 mph = 5.97 seconds. Add a few seconds for gravitational trajectory (maybe 10 seconds to be very generous) and that's 16 seconds to travel from the moon to Earth. There was no warning. The chunks shooting forward in that video are a result of the explosion itself.

As proven with the lottery, math is hard on a lot of folks. The stupid tax if you will. Peace.

I would think it would stir some doubt in some people's minds just how good we are at predicting and protecting earth from meteors.

When it/they come.........we could be all done.

Ya - no problem Spanker. Certain relative physics situations, such as velocity can sometimes be hard to grasp unless they are put in everyday terms. 40K mph is retarded fast, so you have to show it in terms of distance covered.

The boys at NASA say that all of the "doomsday asteroid" movies and shows get it wrong by showing it approaching earth while everyone on the ground just stares at it hurling towards us. It doesn't work that way. You don't get to "see" anything. They are black in a black sky until they hit the atmosphere. The leading edge of a true planet killer (~5+ miles in size) gets so hot when it hits the upper atmosphere that the heat vaporizes most everything on that side of the planet BEFORE the actual impact. It’s a brilliant white light for a mere millisecond and it’s all over.

Sleep tight.

its happened before... just ask the dinosaurs...

Nick, just found it interesting, as well as what you said... they have upped everything now, 55 feet, 14000 tons, 46,000 MPH, and 500 Kilotons of energy... and you are right, we have no missiles or anyone on the planet that could catch something like that...

fyi, the 2 bombs we dropped on Japan, were both under 25 KT's.....

what do you think it is that looks like its flying and slamming into the back of it? vapor trail forming from going so fast? or peices breaking off?

RH - I re-watched it and I can honestly say I have no idea what that could be. Pure speculative guess would be a smaller chunk passing behind the main mass. The angle of the view makes it look like it hit it, but it could have easily been in front of or behind. Air density increases the closer to the ground you get, so the main body would naturally "slow" a bit and anything trailing behind could plausibly play "catch up".

All I do know for certain is that nothing man made hit it. Experimental Rail guns shoot at a paltry 5K+ mph. NASA scramjets at 7.5K. Particle accelerators are the only thing we have that can move that fast (roughly 3 meters second less than the speed of light!).

Found an image of the MF's who shot down RH's Meteor



For a discussion of this event by really smart people check out Astronomy Picture of the Day www.apod.com There is a link at the bottom of today's picture. While there be sure to click archive. There are 20 years of pictures of the Universe. Make sure you have some time

Gutz....couldn't make the link work.

Interesting stuff - I am watching a show on MSNBC called Hubris: Selling the Iraq War. People are notoriously susceptible to a sales pitch that is presented as fact - especially when fear is involved.

That's because I FU. Try this Astronomy Picture of the Day

For the Meteor stuff, see archive on bottom left, then February 18. Be sure to look at some other pictures while there. Some amazing stuff over the years. Here is the url http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/