- Valentine’s Day was a real surprise for many people in Russia. February 14, 2013, a 10,000 ton meteor blasted through the atmosphere. The fireball was traveling 40,000 miles per hour. The shockwave created when the meteor hit the atmosphere blew out glass windows in over 3,000 buildings, over a 1,000 square kilometers. Over 1,000 people were injured. Mostly glass cuts, one with a broken back. People instinctively went to the windows to see what caused the giant flash of light. They were standing in front of the windows when the shockwave reached them.
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- How often does an event like this happen?
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- After tracking data for decades astronomers can predict that asteroids of 4 meters diameter or larger enter the Earth’s atmosphere twice each year, on average. This particular meteor was 17 meters in diameter.
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- The surface of the Earth is 72% oceans and 28% land. On the land, only 3% is inhabited. The total surface of the Earth is 500,000,000 square kilometers.
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- If only 3% or the 28% is inhabited and only 2 events occur each year then 0.84% of the Earth’s surface has human eyes there to see it. 0.8% is 1 / 125 ,so, you would have to wait 125 years to see 2 events, or 62 years to see one event. For an average human lifetime you would likely see one of these meteors. Of course, we are not counting webcams, smart phones, surveillance cameras, etc., just naked eye sightings.
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- The Kinetic Energy of the meteor this size and this fast is astounding.
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------------------------ KE = ½ mass * velocity^2
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------------------------ One ton is 1,000 kilograms. And, one ton of dynamite, TNT, explodes with 4.2*10^9 Joules of energy.
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----------------------- The mass of the meteor was 10,000 tons = 10 million kilograms
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----------------------- The velocity was 40,000 miles per hour = 18 kilometers per second.
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--------------------- Kinetic Energy = ½ * (10^7 kilograms) * ( 1.8*10^4 m/sec)^2
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-------------------- KE = 1.62*10^15 Joules.
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------------------- This is equivalent to 386,000 tons of TNT which is 10 times the energy of an atomic bomb. If it hit directly and released all that energy it would be equivalent to 10 atomic bombs going off all at once.
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- Happy Valentine’s Day, Jim
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(1) Some footnotes about Joules of Energy. The meteor crater in Arizona, 4,000 feet in diameter, 600 feet deep, was created by a meteor with 1,300 *10^15 Joules of energy. That is 800 times more energy than the Russian meteor.
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- The Hiroshima Bomb released 0.084 * 10^15 Joules.
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- The largest H-Bomb tested in 1961 released 240*10^15 Joules.
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- The Earth’s rotational energy is 10^30 Joules.
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(2) The Big Bang released 10^68 Joules. How do they know that? The assumption comes from the total number of protons and neutrons in the Observable Universe to be 10^78. Each particle containing 10^9 electron volts of energy. This ignores gravitational energy and the 90% Unobservable Universe and anti-matter when all added together the total energy is zero Joules. Zero is an amazingly Big number.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email upon request. Some reviews are at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net. ---- “Jim Detrick” -- www.facebook.com, -- www.twitter.com, -- 707-536-3272 Wednesday, February 20, 2013
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