When a 4.5 billion year old relic from the dawn of the solar system cast through the skies above the Russia in 2013 , we all heard about it . Now after over a year of poking through pubic hair for lost fragments and analyse data , we ’ve got a ripe idea of what happened .
Top image : Meteor over Chelyabinsk , Russia on 12 December 2024 . Credit : M. Ahmetvaleev / JPLPIA16828
David A. Kring , scientist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute , andMark Boslough , a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories , traced out everything we now know about the rock that disintegrated 100 kilometre above the Russia - Kazakhstan edge forPhysics Today .
The rock ’s entryway speed make away its original orbit , out in the asteroid whang between Mars and Jupiter . alike to howscientists have reconstructed the collisional story of the meteorite that crashed into a Novato , California home in 2012 , researchers have pieced together the history of the Chelyabinsk shooting star . It was jumpy , metal - poor , and sorry - for - article of clothing from rattle around the solar organization so long .
https://gizmodo.com/unraveling-billions-of-years-of-history-hidden-in-a-roc-1622446993
Once the rock and roll commence feeling the gravitative influence of the Earth is where things get really interesting . Kring and Boslough write :
The Chelyabinsk asteroid first felt the front of Earth ’s atmosphere when it was thousands of kilometers above the Pacific Ocean . For the next dozen arcminute , the 10 000 - short ton tilt accrue swiftly , silently , and unseen , passing at a shallow angle through the rarefied exosphere where the molecular mean free route is much expectant than the 20 - m diameter of the tilt . collision with molecules did nothing to slow the gravitational speedup as it descended over China and Kazakhstan . When it crossed over the border into Russia at 3:20:20 UT and was 100 kilometer above the ground , 99.99997 % of the atmosphere was still beneath it .
Because the asteroid was moving much quicker than air molecules could get out of its way , the atom set about to pack up into a compressed level of high - temperature plasma pushing a stupor undulation frontward . Atmospheric density increase exponentially with depth , so as the asteroid plunged , the plasm layer thickened and its optical opacity rapidly increased . About one second subsequently , at 95 kilometre above the airfoil , it became bright enough to be seen from the ground . That was the first admonition that something bounteous was about to materialize .
They trace out those next fifteen seconds , investigating the kinematics of flight , impact of stress on the sway ’s integrity , and what this rock was doing to the air travel as it rip through . From the physics of fore shocks and explosions , the mechanics of the iridescent trailing cloud , and the passage to dark flight , the piece is well deserving the read .
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