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(CelebNMusic247-News) Meteor Hits Earth Injures Thousands

Editor Update: The meteor that hit in Russia earlier this morning injured over 1,000 people from the sonic boom.

Shocking news today as debris from a meteor streaked through the sky with a blinding flash in western Siberia early Friday, creating a thunderous shock wave that damaged buildings across a vast territory.

The size of this meorite is the size of a SUV, and is said not to be part of the asteriod DA14 that is said to be passing the earth today. The DA14 asteroid is set to pass today coming from a completely different direction and is said to be unrelated to the incident that happened earlier this morning in Russia.

DA14 was found a year ago and scientist have known about the asteriod traveling towards earth which is expected to skim our atmosphere. But this incident has lead to a wide scare in Russia.

Here is what’s being said about the sonic bomb that was created by the SUV size meteorite breaking our atmosphere and vaporating.

Russia’s Interior Ministry said more than 1,000 people were injured, 200 of them children, mostly from shards of shattered glass.

Many of the injuries were reported in the city of Chelyabinsk, about 950 miles east of Moscow, in a region where there are many factories for defense, including nuclear weapons production. But there was no indication of damage that resulted in any radiation leaks, officials said.

The blast was caused by a 10-ton meteor, of a type known as a bolide, which created a powerful shock wave when it hit the Earth’s atmosphere, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement. Scientists believe the bolide exploded and evaporated at a height of about 20 to 30 miles above the Earth’s surface, but that small fragments — meteorites — may have reached the ground, the statement said.

The governor of the Chelyabinsk district reported that material from the sky had fallen into a lake on the outskirts of a city about 50 miles west of Chelyabinsk. Officials told Russian news agencies that they had sent police officers there.

The meteor event came hours before a small asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, passed close to Earth on Friday, which NASA was tracking on its Web site. Aleksandr Y. Dudorov, a physicist at Chelyabinsk State University, said it was possible that the meteorite may have been flying alongside the asteroid.

Fiery meteors are not unusual, but they typically evaporate far above the Earth’s surface, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in its statement. This meteor was unusual because it was so hard, and may have been made of iron, the statement said. Nothing similar has been recorded on Russian territory since 2002.

Video clips from Chelyabinsk showed an early morning sky illuminated by a brilliant flash, followed by the sound of breaking glass and multiple car alarms. Meteors typically cause sonic booms as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere. On Friday, the force was powerful enough to shatter dishes and televisions in people’s homes.

“I saw a flash in the window, turned toward it and saw a burning cloud, which was surrounded by smoke and was going downward — it reminded me of what you see after an explosion,” said Maria Polyakova, 25, head of reception at the Park-City Hotel in Chelyabinsk. A video made outside a building in Chelyabinsk captured the astonished voices of people who were uncertain what it was they had just seen.

“Maybe it was a rocket,” said one man, who rushed outside onto the street with his co-workers after hearing the blast far out of sight. A man named Artyom, who spoke to the Moscow FM radio station, said the explosion was enormous.

“I was sitting at work and the windows lit up and it was as if the whole city was illuminated, and I looked out and saw a huge streak in the sky and it was like that for two or three minutes and then I heard these noises, like claps,” he said. “And then all the dogs started barking.”

He said the blast caused balconies to shake and windows to shatter. He said he did not believe it was a meteor. “We are waiting for a second piece, that is what people are talking about now,” the man said.

Russia TV says a missile blew the meteor apart, indicating — if true (we have our doubts) — someone saw it coming and it raises questions, at least at the World Headquarters of NewsCut — about what else they might have thought it was.

According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air defense unit at the Urzhumka settlement near Chelyabinsk. A missile salvo blew the meteorite to pieces at an altitude of 20 kilometers, local newspaper Znak reports quoting a source in the military.

Regnum news agency quoted a military source who claimed that the vapor condensation trail of the meteorite speaks to the fact that the meteorite was intercepted by air defenses.

The good news is that it doesn’t appear any of the estimated one billion dashboard cameras in the area were damaged…

Now, about that other thing heading our way: We won’t be able to see the asteroid that is due to pass within a cosmic cough of earth today, at least with the naked eye. It’ll be daylight when asteroid 2012 DA14 flies by a little after lunch today.

But some various websites will make it available to you. NASA will stream lives views starting at 11 this morning (here). The Bareket Observatory in Israel is providing images updated a couple of times a minute starting a noon (here) And a telescope in Italy will provide a feed starting at 4 p.m. CT (here)

It’ll be 5 years before the planet launches a spacecraft to help protect us from asteroids. And there are a lot of them out there.

Here is some information on Asteroid impact and how it effects us on the planet: