via Deutsche Welle: DW-WORLD.DE - Top Stories on 2/16/13
Thousands of cleanup workers have been deployed to Russia's central Urals region following Friday's meteorite strike. More than 1,200 people were injured when shockwaves from the 10-tonne meteorite hit the area.
Mike Nova's starred items
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian health official says nearly 1,000 people have sought help for injuries caused by a meteor that exploded in the sky, blasting out countless windows.
Over 700 people have been injured after a meteor blasted across the sky above Russia's Ural Mountains this morning, causing explosions and smashing windows.
Despite advances in scientific knowledge, many of us still want random events and misfortunes to have a deeper significance
There was a time when people only watched the skies to see the calm or stormy movement of clouds, or the revolutions of the celestial spheres, or the clockwork solar system that eventually replaced them. At the end of the Age of Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson may not have been as sceptical about meteors – "easier to believe that two Yankee professors could lie than to admit that stones could fall from heaven" – as legend tells us, but he certainly found the whole idea unlikely. Even as late as 1943, Michael Innes could write a deliberately absurd detective story, The Weight of the Evidence, in which the murder weapon was a meteorite, dropped on an elderly academic from a tower.
But now we are aware that our planet sits in far from empty space, with heavenly billiard balls perpetually about to carom off it. Luis Alvarez determined, from layers of dust and a big hole in Mexico, that one of the things that finished off the dinosaurs was something dropping from the sky. It has been almost more consoling for some people to think of the 1908 Tunguska event, when something smashed a hole in Siberia felling millions of trees, as a failed alien visit than the random collision it was – in a cheesier interpretation the aliens smashed their craft into the falling object to save us. And now, within the next 24 hours, a major meteor event blowing things up in Russia coincides with a near pass from a loose asteroid. Like the prospect of being hanged, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Like all random events and misfortunes, we want these things to mean something. The Russian fringe politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, rushed to the microphones to claim that the shower of stones that broke windows with their sonic boom, injuring 400 people, was a dastardly test of a new American weapon. Advocates of a renewed space programme have instantly told us that the asteroid pass proves that we need to be in space so that anything that comes closer can be, somehow, shoved out of Earth's way. More generally, all over Twitter, people are calling on passing rocks to land on, for example, the Sun offices (over publication of photographs of the late Reeva Steenkamp) as once they would have called for the thunderbolts of Zeus, the wrath of Jehovah or Betjeman's friendly bombs.
The trouble with wanting random events to acquire significance by afflicting unpleasant, otherwise untouchable powerful figures is that everyone does it. The religious right, Christian and Islamic, are fond of regarding tsunamis and hurricanes as instruments of wrath – Pat Robertson came up with a particularly unpleasant version of this when he attributed Haiti's problems to divine punishment for an alleged satanic pact made by that country's successful slave revolution. Nor is this confined to the religious right; rightwing sci-fi writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, in their 1977 novel of a comet's impending collision with Earth, have a character who survives the impact say that the good thing about the calamity was that women's lib was over. Heavenly vengeance is really an idea that has no place on the left.
Perhaps it's better to use asteroids and meteors as a way of thinking about the fragility of existence. If the world were to end tonight, would David Cameron really want to have spent his last day being a politician who throws the disabled out of their flats rather than punish crooked bankers? Not because of the prospect of hellfire, but because it's a naff way to spend precious hours that could have been spent with chocolate and string quartets. Perhaps though, the point about bad people is that they really enjoy being bad. As Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd says: "The lives of the wicked should be made brief. For the rest of us, death would be a relief." On a sunny day, the prospect of universal annihilation adds zest to a brisk walk in the park.
Friday's Russian meteorite strike highlights the need for a global strategy to deal with dangerous asteroids
In terms of human casualties, Friday's meteorite strike is the worst ever reported. Almost 1,000 are reported to have sought treatment after the fall. At least 34 of them were hospitalised, with two reported to be in intensive care.
Before this there were only stories of a dog being killed in Egypt by a meteorite in 1911 and a boy being hit, but not seriously injured, by one in Uganda in 1992.
The Russian Academy of Sciences estimate the fireball that streaked over the Ural mountains on Friday morning weighed about 10 tons. The speed of entry was at least 54,000 kilometres per hour (33,000 mph) and it shattered about 30-50 kilometres (18-32 miles) above ground, showering meteorites that caused damage over a wide area.
The shockwave from the fireball's supersonic passage through the atmosphere broke windows and set off car alarms. The collision took place as the world waited for Friday evening's close pass of asteroid 2012 DA14. According to the European Space Agency, no link between the two events is thought possible.
Until Friday morning, astronomers had thought the asteroid most likely to hit Earth was one called 2007 VK184. It is about 130 metres across and has a slim 1 in 2,000 chance of hitting Earth some time between 2048 and 2057. A danger that is thought will disappear with better tracking of its orbit.
Friday's unexpected strike highlights the need for better searches for dangerous asteroids, and a global strategy to deal with any that are seen.
Astronomers feel confident that they know the whereabouts of every asteroid larger than 30 kilometres. Such space rocks have been the priority because they have the potential to cause global catastrophe and mass extinction events should they hit us. None are known to pose a threat.
Go down to objects sized one kilometre and astronomers think they know about 90-95% of them. However, at 50 metres, the size of 2012 DA14, the uncertainties really begin. Astronomers estimate that they know only 2 percent of these.
There could be hundreds of thousands of these smaller asteroids waiting to be discovered. Were something of this size to strike the Earth, it would devastate an area the size of larger than London.
On 30 June 1908, something roughly this size hit Earth. It exploded in the air above the Tunguska region of Siberia and flattened forests across an area of hundreds of square kilometres. The area is so remote that no one is thought to have been killed by that event.
The object that struck above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Friday morning was smaller still, probably just 10 metres across. Yet, it has injured many hundreds, underlining the danger of space rocks hitting populated areas,
The European Space Agency is involved in a £6m project to build a special survey telescope to find small asteroids. Known as a Fly-Eye telescope, it works in the same way as an insect's compound eye.
The telescope will use multiple cameras to build up a full picture of the sky. The first idea to build such a telescope was published way back in 1897 but it proved too difficult with the technology of the 19th century. Now, a prototype is under construction in Italy. The final telescope could be located on Mt Teide, Tenerife.
In Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS project uses the world's largest digital camera, containing 1,400 Megapixels, to scan the sky for asteroids larger than 300 metres in size. That's about six times larger than 2012 DA14, and 30 times larger than Friday's Russian meteor. Such asteroids would be capable of devastating whole regions of a country were they to hit Earth.
Deciding what to do if a dangerous asteroid is spotted falls first to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. They are setting up a Space Mission Planning Advisory Group. This will be composed of scientists from NASA, ESA and the world's other space agencies. They will meet annually to assess new ideas of how to deflect dangerous asteroids.
Should an asteroid be found on a collision course, the group will immediately meet to advise on the best strategy for deflecting it. They will also advise on who has the expertise to build the different parts of the spacecraft, and who should pay for it. Then, the decision passes into the hands of the politicians.
But as Friday's sudden strike shows, asteroids that approach from "out of the Sun" are virtually impossible to see. They are hidden from our sight by the glare until they smash into our atmosphere.
From space, thankfully, it is a different story. Space telescopes can see much closer to the Sun because they do not have the Earth's atmosphere scattering the sunlight and blurring their vision. The European Space Agency's Gaia mission, which launches later this year, could help us see into this asteroid blind spot.
Stuart Clark is the author of The Day Without Yesterday (Polygon).
MOSCOW (AP) — A meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains with the power of an atomic bomb Friday, its sonic blasts shattering countless windows and injuring nearly 1,000 people.
via Russia News Headlines - Yahoo! News on 2/15/13
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian health official says nearly 1,000 people have sought help for injuries caused by a meteor that exploded in the sky, blasting out countless windows.
via - Europe RSS Feed on 2/15/13
Over 700 people have been injured after a meteor blasted across the sky above Russia's Ural Mountains this morning, causing explosions and smashing windows.
via Russia - Google News on 2/15/13
 ABC News (blog) |
Surprise attack: Meteor explodes over Russia hours before giant asteroid flyby ...
Washington Post (blog) In this frame grab made from a video done with a dashboard camera, on a highway from Kostanai, Kazakhstan, to Chelyabinsk region, Russia, provided by Nasha Gazeta newspaper, on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013 a meteorite contrail is seen. (AP - AP). Today's big ... Meteor shower in Russia unrelated to large asteroid predicted to make a close ...Boston.com (blog) Live Blog: Meteor Hit in Russia; Asteroid 2012 DA14 ApproachesABC News (blog) Meteor over Russia! (pictures)CNET NBCNews.com (blog) -Space.com -CNN all 513 news articles » |
via World news: Russia | guardian.co.uk by Roz Kaveney on 2/15/13
There was a time when people only watched the skies to see the calm or stormy movement of clouds, or the revolutions of the celestial spheres, or the clockwork solar system that eventually replaced them. At the end of the Age of Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson may not have been as sceptical about meteors – "easier to believe that two Yankee professors could lie than to admit that stones could fall from heaven" – as legend tells us, but he certainly found the whole idea unlikely. Even as late as 1943, Michael Innes could write a deliberately absurd detective story, The Weight of the Evidence, in which the murder weapon was a meteorite, dropped on an elderly academic from a tower.
But now we are aware that our planet sits in far from empty space, with heavenly billiard balls perpetually about to carom off it. Luis Alvarez determined, from layers of dust and a big hole in Mexico, that one of the things that finished off the dinosaurs was something dropping from the sky. It has been almost more consoling for some people to think of the 1908 Tunguska event, when something smashed a hole in Siberia felling millions of trees, as a failed alien visit than the random collision it was – in a cheesier interpretation the aliens smashed their craft into the falling object to save us. And now, within the next 24 hours, a major meteor event blowing things up in Russia coincides with a near pass from a loose asteroid. Like the prospect of being hanged, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Like all random events and misfortunes, we want these things to mean something. The Russian fringe politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, rushed to the microphones to claim that the shower of stones that broke windows with their sonic boom, injuring 400 people, was a dastardly test of a new American weapon. Advocates of a renewed space programme have instantly told us that the asteroid pass proves that we need to be in space so that anything that comes closer can be, somehow, shoved out of Earth's way. More generally, all over Twitter, people are calling on passing rocks to land on, for example, the Sun offices (over publication of photographs of the late Reeva Steenkamp) as once they would have called for the thunderbolts of Zeus, the wrath of Jehovah or Betjeman's friendly bombs.
The trouble with wanting random events to acquire significance by afflicting unpleasant, otherwise untouchable powerful figures is that everyone does it. The religious right, Christian and Islamic, are fond of regarding tsunamis and hurricanes as instruments of wrath – Pat Robertson came up with a particularly unpleasant version of this when he attributed Haiti's problems to divine punishment for an alleged satanic pact made by that country's successful slave revolution. Nor is this confined to the religious right; rightwing sci-fi writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, in their 1977 novel of a comet's impending collision with Earth, have a character who survives the impact say that the good thing about the calamity was that women's lib was over. Heavenly vengeance is really an idea that has no place on the left.
Perhaps it's better to use asteroids and meteors as a way of thinking about the fragility of existence. If the world were to end tonight, would David Cameron really want to have spent his last day being a politician who throws the disabled out of their flats rather than punish crooked bankers? Not because of the prospect of hellfire, but because it's a naff way to spend precious hours that could have been spent with chocolate and string quartets. Perhaps though, the point about bad people is that they really enjoy being bad. As Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd says: "The lives of the wicked should be made brief. For the rest of us, death would be a relief." On a sunny day, the prospect of universal annihilation adds zest to a brisk walk in the park.
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
via World news: Russia | guardian.co.uk by Stuart Clark on 2/15/13
In terms of human casualties, Friday's meteorite strike is the worst ever reported. Almost 1,000 are reported to have sought treatment after the fall. At least 34 of them were hospitalised, with two reported to be in intensive care.
Before this there were only stories of a dog being killed in Egypt by a meteorite in 1911 and a boy being hit, but not seriously injured, by one in Uganda in 1992.
The Russian Academy of Sciences estimate the fireball that streaked over the Ural mountains on Friday morning weighed about 10 tons. The speed of entry was at least 54,000 kilometres per hour (33,000 mph) and it shattered about 30-50 kilometres (18-32 miles) above ground, showering meteorites that caused damage over a wide area.
The shockwave from the fireball's supersonic passage through the atmosphere broke windows and set off car alarms. The collision took place as the world waited for Friday evening's close pass of asteroid 2012 DA14. According to the European Space Agency, no link between the two events is thought possible.
Until Friday morning, astronomers had thought the asteroid most likely to hit Earth was one called 2007 VK184. It is about 130 metres across and has a slim 1 in 2,000 chance of hitting Earth some time between 2048 and 2057. A danger that is thought will disappear with better tracking of its orbit.
Friday's unexpected strike highlights the need for better searches for dangerous asteroids, and a global strategy to deal with any that are seen.
Astronomers feel confident that they know the whereabouts of every asteroid larger than 30 kilometres. Such space rocks have been the priority because they have the potential to cause global catastrophe and mass extinction events should they hit us. None are known to pose a threat.
Go down to objects sized one kilometre and astronomers think they know about 90-95% of them. However, at 50 metres, the size of 2012 DA14, the uncertainties really begin. Astronomers estimate that they know only 2 percent of these.
There could be hundreds of thousands of these smaller asteroids waiting to be discovered. Were something of this size to strike the Earth, it would devastate an area the size of larger than London.
On 30 June 1908, something roughly this size hit Earth. It exploded in the air above the Tunguska region of Siberia and flattened forests across an area of hundreds of square kilometres. The area is so remote that no one is thought to have been killed by that event.
The object that struck above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Friday morning was smaller still, probably just 10 metres across. Yet, it has injured many hundreds, underlining the danger of space rocks hitting populated areas,
The European Space Agency is involved in a £6m project to build a special survey telescope to find small asteroids. Known as a Fly-Eye telescope, it works in the same way as an insect's compound eye.
The telescope will use multiple cameras to build up a full picture of the sky. The first idea to build such a telescope was published way back in 1897 but it proved too difficult with the technology of the 19th century. Now, a prototype is under construction in Italy. The final telescope could be located on Mt Teide, Tenerife.
In Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS project uses the world's largest digital camera, containing 1,400 Megapixels, to scan the sky for asteroids larger than 300 metres in size. That's about six times larger than 2012 DA14, and 30 times larger than Friday's Russian meteor. Such asteroids would be capable of devastating whole regions of a country were they to hit Earth.
Deciding what to do if a dangerous asteroid is spotted falls first to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. They are setting up a Space Mission Planning Advisory Group. This will be composed of scientists from NASA, ESA and the world's other space agencies. They will meet annually to assess new ideas of how to deflect dangerous asteroids.
Should an asteroid be found on a collision course, the group will immediately meet to advise on the best strategy for deflecting it. They will also advise on who has the expertise to build the different parts of the spacecraft, and who should pay for it. Then, the decision passes into the hands of the politicians.
But as Friday's sudden strike shows, asteroids that approach from "out of the Sun" are virtually impossible to see. They are hidden from our sight by the glare until they smash into our atmosphere.
From space, thankfully, it is a different story. Space telescopes can see much closer to the Sun because they do not have the Earth's atmosphere scattering the sunlight and blurring their vision. The European Space Agency's Gaia mission, which launches later this year, could help us see into this asteroid blind spot.
Stuart Clark is the author of The Day Without Yesterday (Polygon).
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
via NYT > Europe by on 2/15/13
The Times’s Ellen Barry and Richard P. Binzel, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, discuss the explosive event over western Siberia on Friday.
via NYT > Europe by By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on 2/15/13
The Vatican was drawn into a new controversy over its embattled bank after acknowledging that the institution’s new president is also chairman of a shipbuilder making warships for Germany.
via Russia News Headlines - Yahoo! News on 2/15/13
MOSCOW (AP) — A meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains with the power of an atomic bomb Friday, its sonic blasts shattering countless windows and injuring nearly 1,000 people.
via The Moscow Times Top Stories by The Moscow Times <moscowtimes@themoscowtimes.com> on 2/14/13
The Moscow Exchange began trading of its own shares Friday in a successful conclusion to the largest initial public offering carried out solely in Russia.
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