Even though astronomers say the both events have nothing to
do with each other, were the Russian Ural Region meteorite impact and the
asteroid flyby just mere cosmic coincidence?
By: Ringo Bones
Friday, February 14, 2013 could be a very memorable date for
anyone interested in cosmic events as a 2-meter meteor broke up over the skies
of Russia’s Ural Region producing a shockwave equivalent to five times that of
the Hiroshima A-Bomb that injured over a thousand people and causing over
30-million US dollars in property damage. Pieces of the meteor had even struck
as far afield as neighboring Kazakhstan.
Though astronomers say the events are unrelated, Asteroid 2012 DA14 –
with a diameter of 150-meters – just came within 28,000 kilometers – just a
tenth the distance between the Earth and the Moon, and grazed the orbit window
of geosynchronous satellites.
The smaller two-meter meteor that broke up over the Urals
might be the one posing the most danger but our current optical and radio
telescope technology are not sensitive enough to see and detect two-meter wide
or smaller meteoroids as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere. And even though the
odds of being hit by a former celestial body is insignificantly low at 1 in
150-trillion, it doesn’t offer comfort to the over 1,000 Russians injured by
flying shattered glass caused by the shockwave of the meteorite strike – though
the last one such event happened in the general region was back in 1908 where a
large meteorite exploded over Tunguska, Siberia. And the only person ever hit
and injured by a meteorite strike was Mrs. Ann Hewlett Hodges.
