Meteor in central Russia 'largest rock' to hit Earth in 100 years

16 February, 2013

Initially people thought that the ball of fire rushing towards them in the sky was a airplane about to crash but it was later confirmed to be a meteor that injured about 1000 people in central Russia on Saturday.

According to reports by the Russian Interior Ministry 112 people have been seriously injured and 200 children were also injured by flying debris and glass. People said that they experienced a pressure wave followed by the fire ball and explosions. Six sightings of fiery objects falling from the sky were reported in central Russia. Car alarms blared, window glasses broke and mobile networks were messed up. For the people in the vicinity, it was surreal and something out of a movie.

The largest rock to hit the Earth in 100 years, as was stated by NASA, was 15 meters in diameter traveling at 18 kms per second. The shallow trajectory of the meteor was followed by explosions and broken windows in buildings as the pressure released by the meteor was 100 kilotonnes of energy, reported a news website.

Within hours, another space activity was reported in which a large asteroid passed the earth over the Indian Ocean. NASA clearly stated that the two incidents are not related and they were tracking the path of this asteroid for many days to predict that it would miss Earth by 28,000 kms.

A number of videos shot by the people witnessing the whole incident have gone viral on the Internet. Some even believed that the world was ending, and there were videos of screaming children and running adults, which shows the impact of the meteor otherwise not understandable by people sitting on the other side of the computer screen.