Simultaneously frightening and awe inspiring, a 10 tonne meteor crashed into the Russian city of Chelyabinsk causing shock waves to vibrate throughout the city and resulting in blown out storefronts, shattered glass and as many as a thousand people suffering minor injuries.
The meteor lit up the darkened sky as it shot through the air before breaking apart in the Earth’s atmosphere. The Russian Academy of Sciences said the meteor was probably made of iron and broke apart about 30 km above ground. The energy released by the meteor in this rare event was equal to the power released from the explosion of a small atomic weapon!
While this was a frightening event for residents, it was totally normal and not actually a cause for alarm. There are apparently one to ten thousand tonnes of space materials that rain down on Earth, but luckily most of them get dissolved in our atmosphere. Though events like this meteor are rare, they are not unexpected and can be dangerous. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to control what falls to Earth from space!