This is a pretty realistic vision for the end of the world, right? , injuring close to 1,000 people. (Quick astronomy lesson: If it burned up in the atmosphere, it’d be called a “meteor.” When the debris actually reaches Earth, it’s a “meteorite.”) Most importantly, no one died.
The meteorite exploded 50 miles west of Chelyabinsk (thankfully, since more than one million people live there), but the explosion caused a sonic boom, which . Most of the injuries were glass-related.
So, how big and how fast was this thing? According to The Atlantic Wire (which will ):
Russian scientists estimate that the meteorite weighed in at around 10 tons, , or about 20,000 pounds—and that it hurtled toward Earth … at 33,000 miles per hour. And apparently 10 tons in space is chump change compared to , which is apparently the size of an Olympic swimming pool—space agencies have carefully predicted the path of that beast many times over already.
More frightening than all those big numbers: Russian authorities say the event was completely unpredictable. And more frightening than that: this video.