Why no one noticed the explosion of a large meteorite near the Russian coast

Why no one noticed the explosion of a large meteorite near the Russian coast

It turns out that a large meteorite collapsed not far from Russian territory and was noticed only a few months later! Where did it happen and what did the cosmic guest look like?

Meteor Attack

The Earth lives in a very turbulent outer space, so the arrival of meteorites is standard practice. This is so commonplace that it is almost not noticed by earthlings. For example, 5-6 tons of meteorite dust scattered all over the planet is collected on our surface every day.

But this is due to the fact that the arrived objects are not of remarkable size. Most of it burns in the atmospheric layer, and if something comes, it is tiny fragments. However, there are quite unexpected guests, whose arrival leaves scars. We can recall the Chelyabinsk or Tungus meteorites. They created large-scale explosions that led to destruction and injury.

But the most dangerous thing is that these are relatively recent events. For example, the Chelyabinsk guest flew in 2013, but no one had time to fix it in time to warn the population. And this is in the 21st century, when monitoring systems constantly monitor near-earth environs, capturing all the approaching objects.

New punch

Why no one noticed the explosion of a large meteorite near the Russian coast

Bering Sea Water Area

Surprisingly, many did not notice that on December 18, 2018, another powerful fall occurred. This was announced a few days ago by NASA researchers. Their satellite radars recorded a strange burst of activity in the atmosphere, but it took months to decode the data. What was that? It turns out that at a distance of several hundred kilometers from the coast of Russia (over the water area of ​​the Bering Sea) a large meteorite exploded. The explosion itself occurred at an altitude of 26 km, when the object accelerated to a speed indicator of 32 km / s. In power, it is inferior to the “Chelyabinsk brother” (60% of its strength), but the figure of 173 kilotons is still 7-10 times greater than the power of the Hiroshima event.

Why did the blast go unnoticed for so long? It's all about the location of the fall. The meteorite exploded in a relatively deserted place. He was noticed only on satellite images of NASA and the Japanese device Himawari. The good news is that the object did not reach the surface, but exploded in the air, and that there were no witnesses nearby.

Postscript

Experts claim that there is nothing to worry about. Such large guests come to our planet no more than once every 200-300 years. That's just scary the fact that we still do not have high-quality protection systems. And if more precisely, then no protection, except the earth's atmosphere. Therefore, if suddenly a large space rock rushes in, we can only hope for a timely warning in order to collect things and retire to a safer place.

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