Remember that meteor that exploded over Russia just 4 days ago? It caused havoc in Chelyabinsk, Russia when 1,200 people and 3,724 buildings were damaged.

Videos flooded the internet on the day of the impact that gave the rest of the world an idea of what the meteor looked like. After watching one of the videos, it is hard to imagine the size of the meteor. Take a look:

After a careful investigation by NASA thanks to a worldwide network of sensors, we can get a better estimate on how big this meteor was. Before the meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere, NASA believes that it was 55 feet (17 meters) in size.

Previously, the object was only believed to have released 30 kilotons of energy. Now, with the help of 5 infrasound stations located around the world, the estimate has been raised to nearly 500 kilotons of energy released. This number of over 30 times greater than the amount of energy that the “Little Boy” released in Hiroshima.

With the new data, NASA has concluded that the Russia meteor is “the largest reported since 1908, when a meteor hit Tunguska, Siberia”. But before you start to worry and build an underground shelter, NASA believes that an event such as this is only to occur once every 100 years.

How do you feel about meteors and asteroids playing in our atmosphere? Do you think that NASA and all governments should expand their programs to better protect against these objects? Let us know in the comments below. [ Source ]

The post NASA: Russian Meteor Was Largest In Over A Century At 10,000 Tons appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Recently a meteor crashed in Russia, injuring close a thousand people. What if we could prevent such an event from happening again? That’s what a few California scientists are hoping to accomplish with their solar powered concept, the “Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and Exploration” or DE-Star.

So what would De-Star be and do exactly? The idea is that it would function as an orbiting system that could channel solar power into a phased array of laser beams, could then be used to blast meteors and space rocks, or even perhaps as a defense against hostile alien forces.

The beam could work a few different ways: it could be used to destroy, evaporate or even push such objects into a new direction. It could also prove useful for assessing an asteroid’s composition, aiding in future tasks like mining in space.
Sounds pretty far fetched, right? According to the scientists behind it, Gary B. Hughes from California Polytechnic State University, it is actually possible with current technology.

“This system is not some far-out idea from Star Trek,” Hughes said. “All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we’d need — scaling up would be the challenge — but the basic elements are all there and ready to go. We just need to put them into a larger system to be effective, and once the system is there, it can do so many things.”

Besides blasting away asteroids and meteors, the system could also be used for aiding in planetary exploration. The idea for space exploration with this technology is that it could be used to increase the speed of interplanetary travel with a large enough version of De-Star in place. The tech behind it could supposedly power advanced ion drive system for deep space travel and so forth. Of course at this point thing start to get a bit more “Star Trek” compared to what’s technologically possible today.

Bottom-line, the technology behind De-Star could be used to protect our planet and perhaps, someday, even help us advance our presence into other planets beyond our solar system.

Want to know more about what this technology could someday bring? Check out the original article at EarthSky.org.

What do you think of this technology, is it possible and practical enough, or nothing more than a distant pipe-dream?

The post DE-STAR Could Protect Us From Asteroids and Meteors in the Future appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Today a 10 ton meteor exploded over Russia’s Ural Mountains, entering the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 33,000mph and injuring as many as a thousand people. Thanks to dash cams being very common in Russia, the event was actually quite heavily recorded.

The meteor shattered about 18-32 miles above the ground and then hit down to rush around 9:20 local time, just after sunrise. The meteor smashed down with a shock wave that blew an estimated 1 million square feet of glass, according to city officials in Chelyabinsk.

According to witnesses of the event, the disruption not only smashed windows but even caused cellphone disruption as the meteor exploded in the air. As you can imagine, this caused quite a bit of panic in Russia at the time, and has also lead to speculation that the meteor hit could have something to do with Asteroid 2012DA14, which is making a cosmically close pass by Earth (at 17,150 miles away) sometime later today.

The good news though is that further investigation seems to indicate this is merely a coincidence and has nothing to do with the passing by of the asteroid.

So how many have sought medical care after the shock wave so far? The current count is 985 people, with 44 of them being hospitalized. Not surprisingly, most of the injuries had to do with flying glass. Luckily, there has been no reports of deaths related to the event. There was quite a bit of building destruction outside the injuries, though. Around 3,000 buildings in the Chelyabinsk region have taken damage of some kind.

Reports are coming in that a 20-foot-wide crater was found near the believed main impact area, which could come from space fragments striking the ground. Today’s encounter with a meteor wasn’t nearly the biggest that Russia has seen, though.

Below is a video compilation of just a few of the videos gathered relating to the meteor hitting in Russia:

I can’t imagine how terrifying being right near the impact area would have been. Makes us realize just how little control we have over the cosmos, doesn’t it?

[ source ]

The post Meteor Explodes Over Central Russia, Nearly 1000 Injured appeared first on Mobile Magazine.