RUSSIAN METEOR RAIN

15th februari, 2013
Chelyabinsk
Ural mountains
Lake/ Zink Factory
3 meteors

CONCEQUENCES

• 1000 hurt
• 3000 buildings
• No school for 2 days
• Diamonds

Experts said the meteoroid that left a 50-foot hole in a frozen lake on the outskirts of Chelyabinsk, in the Urals, weighed around 50 tonnes and measured 55 feet in diameter
The picture shows the hole on the frozen lake made by the meteoroid

Untitled Slide

There was a big chance that more asteroids would hit earth minutes/ hours after the first one. The reason was because of our atmosphere. The atmosphere gets a bit weaker every time a massive asteroid flies through it. Often if it flies through the atmosphere at the same place. So the russian people were really afraid of more asteroids, but luckily, no more asteroids hit earth at that point.

The zink factory that got hit by a meteoroid

MORE PICTURES

One of the meteoroides

Another meteoroid

The pressure from the meteoroides crashed over 1000 windows

Untitled Slide

Astronomes says that if the meteoroid had hit Earth four minutes earlier, it would have hit Malmö, southern of Sweden, instead of Russia.

The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was the Chicxulub asteroid in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The Chicxulub Crater is around 180 km in diameter and 10 km deep. The crater was formed about 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub Crater was formed by either an asteroid or a comet that was roughly 10 km in diameter and it hit with 100 million megatons of force. More than 50% of the worlds different species were killed because of the climate changes caused by the dust that was thrown into the air. Nearly all of the dinosaurs eventually died from all of the changes that this impact event had on the Earth’s environment. Acid rain and fires would have finished those that did not die from the climate changes.

WHAT IS A METEOR?

Meteoroids are made up of small particles of space, molten rock and magnetic layers of ice. As the meteoroid travels entering the earth it heats up causing a meteor shower. Meteoroids come in different sizes ranging from tiny particles called micrometeoroid. A meteoroid can weigh up to 70 tons.

The asteroid belt contains about 750.000 big asteroids (huge meteoroids) but also millions of small ones, and some small comets too. The asteroid belt is rotating around the sun and is the biggest collection of rocks in the milky way.

METEOR FACTS

DID YOU KNOW?

-The blast caused by the shock waves of the Russian meteoroid was picked up by infrasound sensors on the other side of the world.

- It's illegal to sell pieces of meteoroides in south africa.

- The Earth’s atmosphere experiences millions of meteors every day.

-The fastest meteoroids travel through the solar system at a speed of around 42 kilometres /sec

- Meteoroides vary in size, they can be a small as a grain of sand or as big as a small car!

- When a meteoroid measures greater than 10 metres in diameter it is called an asteroid

- Meteoroids often cause damage to satellites, space craft and space probs

Asteroids and planets share a common birth. The process that helped form the planets is called accretion. During the beginning of the universe when two bodies would collide they would stick together forming a larger body. The planets and asteroids were formed like this. Obviously the planets got more mass than most of the asteroids. But, as seen by the asteroid Ceres being a dwarf planet, some asteroids came very close to garnering enough mass and generate gravity just enough to possible become planets in their own right.

Where did the Asteroid Belt come from?

Asteroids are left over materials from the formation of the Solar System. These materials were never incorporated into a planet because of their proximity to Jupiter's strong gravity. So all the left over materials formes meteors or asteroids. That's why the asteroid belt exists. There were a lot of left overs.

The main difference between an asteroid and a comet is what they are made of. Asteroids are made up of metals and rocky material, while comets are made up of ice, dust and rocky material. Both of these space objects were formed during the earliest times of the solar system, around 4.5 billion years ago.

A comet is basically a big ball of ice and rocks
They are leftovers from the beginning of the solar system, almost like meteors.

Why does it have a tail?

As a comet approaches and get close to the sun it starts spewing dust and gas. This debris forms a tail which is the image we are familiar with, the tail will always point away from the sun. The main reason for this is because the sun's heat and radiation.

WILL THERE BE ANOTHER ASTEROID?

Apophis is an asteroid with an slightly offset orbit to that of Earth's. Discovered in June 2004, astronomers have determined that it will make a very close flyby on Friday, April 13th, 2029, where it will pass to within 5 Earth diameters of us. The exact path the asteroid follows on its flyby in 2029 will determine whether it smashes into the Earth seven years later.

"IF"
If the asteroid hits earth by 2036, earth will change, drastically. A lot of people will die because of the actual asteroid. They will die because of preassure or if the actually get hit by it. But other reasons why humans wouldn't survive are these:
Temperature changes, our atmosphere will become weaker and let in more asteroids, gases, destroyed factories/objects and dead animals. If there are no animals, we won't have any food. It would also be hard to plant things because of gases and temperature changes.

Meteor, Meteorite or Meteoroid?

Meteor: A meteor is the flash of a meteorite flying through space near our atmoshphere.

Meteorite: A meteorite is a small piece of matter, that often comes through our atmosphere but dissolves on its way to surface.

Meteoroid: It's called meteoroid if the meteorite hit surface instead of dissolving. So the thing that hit Russia is called a meteoroid.

These three words are very often mixed up in media and by people

SOURCES

• http://www.svd.se/nyheter/utrikes/meteoritregn-i-ryssland_7916540.svd
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
• http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article16244920.ab
• http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/answer.php.id=22&cat=solarsystem
• http://www.express.co.uk/fun/top10facts/378833/Top-10-facts-about-meteors

SOURCES

• http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/space/meteoroids.html
• http://www.fun-facts.org.uk/planets/meteoroids.htm
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280416/Russian-Meteor-PICTURED-Fir...
• http://www.universetoday.com/36697/the-asteroid-that-killed-the-dinosaurs/