Last Friday, the skies above Russia’s Ural Mountains were set ablaze by a meteorite that had many Russian citizens believing Judgement Day was upon them.
The estimated 10-ton meteorite broke apart in the atmosphere near the city of Chelyabinsk and resulted in more than $33 million worth of property damage in more than 4,000 buildings in the region, according to The Weather Channel.
Approximately 1,200 people were injured from the impact, mainly lacerations as a result of flying glass. Many are still being treated in hospitals.
“If the meteor, which exploded above us, was just a little bigger, it’s hard to imagine what could have happened to our towns and villages,” Chelyabinsk Gov. Mikhail Yurevich told Russia Today.
The total energy of the impact was compared to that of 20 atomic bombs—enough force to blow out the windows of thousands of buildings and collapse part of a factory roof.
President Vladimir Putin quickly responded to the event and organized a cleanup group of more than 20,000 members of the nation’s civil offense service and seven aircrafts. With freezing temperatures, the replacement of broken windows and walls has been their primary focus.
The unexpected cosmic visitor entered Earth’s atmosphere at 64,000 km per hour just as the 2012 DA14 asteroid was sweeping by our planet. NASA scientists have confirmed the two events are not correlated.
Russia is no stranger to meteorite impacts and their devastating consequences. In 1908, an event known as the Tunguska explosion occurred when a meteorite broke apart five miles above Earth’s surface and uprooted 80 million trees in central Siberia. Although the more recent meteorite didn’t cause as much catastrophic damage as the Tunguska event, the Russian government is calling for an international asteroid defense system that could prevent further unexpected catastrophes
from occurring.
Vitaly Davydov, the deputy head of Russia’s federal space agency, told local Russian media planetary defense will become a “priority” for Russia in the
coming years.
The intrusion of meteorites in daily human life is not a common phenomenon. But when one does slip through Earth’s atmospheric defenses and dawns its fiery trail upon the skies, it bestows a stark reminder of the chaotic forces that inhabit our cosmos—the place we call home.
