Sutter Mill meteorite, April 22, 2012
This meteorite, named Sutter Mill, appeared on Earth on April 22, 2012, moving at a breakneck speed of 29 km/sec. It flew over the states of Nevada and California, scattering its hot ones, and exploded over Washington. The power of the explosion was about 4 kilotons of TNT. For comparison, the power of yesterday's meteorite explosion when it fell on Chelyabinsk was 300 tons of TNT equivalent. Scientists have found that the Sutter Mill meteorite appeared in the early days of the existence of our solar system, and the progenitor cosmic body was formed over 4566.57 million years ago. Fragments of the Sutter Mill meteorite:
Meteor shower in China, February 11, 2012
Almost a year ago, on February 11, 2012, about a hundred meteorite stones fell over an area of 100 km in one of the regions of China. The largest meteorite found weighed 12.6 kg. The meteorites are believed to have come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Meteorite from Peru, September 15, 2007
This meteorite fell in Peru near Lake Titicaca, near the border with Bolivia. Eyewitnesses claimed that at first there was a strong noise, similar to the sound of a falling plane, but then they saw a falling body engulfed in fire. A bright trail from a white-hot cosmic body entering the Earth's atmosphere is called a meteor.
At the site of the fall, the explosion formed a crater with a diameter of 30 and a depth of 6 meters, from which a fountain of boiling water began to flow. The meteorite probably contained toxic substances, as 1,500 people living nearby began to experience severe headaches. Meteorite crash site in Peru:
By the way, most often stone meteorites (92.8%), consisting mainly of silicates, fall to Earth. The meteorite that fell on Chelyabinsk was iron, according to first estimates. Fragments of a Peruvian meteorite:
Kunya-Urgench meteorite from Turkmenistan, June 20, 1998
The meteorite fell near the Turkmen city of Kunya-Urgench, hence its name. Before the fall, residents saw a bright light. The largest part of the meteorite, weighing 820 kg, fell into a cotton field, creating a crater about 5 meters.
This one, more than 4 billion years old, received a certificate from the International Meteorite Society and is considered the largest stone meteorite of all that fell in the CIS and the third in the world. Fragment of a Turkmen meteorite:
Meteorite Sterlitamak, May 17, 1990
The Sterlitamak iron meteorite weighing 315 kg fell on a state farm field 20 km west of the city of Sterlitamak on the night of May 17-18, 1990. When a meteorite fell, a crater with a diameter of 10 meters was formed. First, small metal fragments were found, and only a year later, at a depth of 12 meters, the largest fragment weighing 315 kg was found. Now the meteorite (0.5 x 0.4 x 0.25 meters) is in the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography of the Ufa Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Fragments of a meteorite. On the left is the same fragment weighing 315 kg:
Largest meteor shower, China, March 8, 1976
In March 1976, the largest meteorite rock shower in the world occurred in the Chinese province of Jilin, lasting 37 minutes. Cosmic bodies fell to the ground at a speed of 12 km/sec. Fantasy on the theme of meteorites:
Then they found about a hundred meteorites, including the largest - the 1.7-ton Jilin (Girin) meteorite.
These are the stones that fell from the sky onto China for 37 minutes:
The meteorite fell in the Far East in the Ussuri taiga in the Sikhote-Alin mountains on February 12, 1947. It fragmented in the atmosphere and fell in the form of iron rain over an area of 10 sq. km.
After the fall, more than 30 craters were formed with a diameter of 7 to 28 m and a depth of up to 6 meters. About 27 tons of meteorite material were collected. Fragments of “piece of iron” that fell from the sky during a meteor shower:
Goba meteorite, Namibia, 1920
Meet Goba - the largest meteorite ever found! Strictly speaking, it fell approximately 80,000 years ago. This iron giant weighs about 66 tons and has a volume of 9 cubic meters. fell in prehistoric times and was found in Namibia in 1920 near Grootfontein.
The Goba meteorite is mainly composed of iron and is considered the heaviest of all celestial bodies of this kind that have ever appeared on Earth. It is preserved at a crash site in southwest Africa, Namibia, near Goba West Farm. This is also the largest piece of naturally occurring iron on Earth. Since 1920, the meteorite has shrunk slightly: erosion, scientific research and vandalism have taken their toll: the meteorite has “lost weight” to 60 tons.
The mystery of the Tunguska meteorite, 1908
On June 30, 1908, at about 07 a.m., a large fireball flew over the territory of the Yenisei basin from southeast to northwest. The flight ended with an explosion at an altitude of 7-10 km above an uninhabited taiga region. The blast wave circled the globe twice and was recorded by observatories around the world. The power of the explosion is estimated at 40-50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb. The flight speed of the space giant was tens of kilometers per second. Weight - from 100 thousand to 1 million tons!
Podkamennaya Tunguska River area:
As a result of the explosion, trees were knocked down over an area of more than 2,000 square meters. km, window glass in houses was broken several hundred kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. The blast wave destroyed animals and injured people within a radius of about 40 km. For several days, intense sky glow and luminous clouds were observed from the Atlantic to central Siberia:
But what was it? If it was a meteorite, then a huge crater half a kilometer deep should have appeared at the site of its fall. But none of the expeditions succeeded in finding it... The Tunguska meteorite is, on the one hand, one of the most well-studied phenomena, on the other, one of the most mysterious phenomena of the past century. The celestial body exploded in the air, and no remains of it, except the consequences of the explosion, were found on earth.
Meteor shower of 1833
On the night of November 13, 1833, a meteor shower occurred over the eastern United States. It continued continuously for 10 hours! During this time, about 240,000 meteorites of various sizes fell to the Earth's surface. The meteor shower of 1833 was the most powerful meteor shower known. Now this shower is called the Leonids in honor of the constellation Leo, against which it is visible every year in mid-November. On a much more modest scale, of course. Leonids meteor shower, November 19, 2001:
Leonids meteor shower over Monument Valley in the USA, November 19, 2012:
Every day, about 20 meteorite showers pass near the Earth. About 50 comets are known that could potentially cross the orbit of our planet. Collisions of the Earth with relatively small cosmic bodies several tens of meters in size occur once every 10 years.
Meteorite falls are always sudden and can happen anywhere at any time. It is accompanied by powerful sound and light phenomena. For several minutes at this time, a dazzlingly bright and large fireball flashes across the sky. If a meteorite falls during the day in bright sunlight and a cloudless sky, then the fireball may not be visible. However, after its flight, a billowing trail remains in the sky, similar to smoke, and a dark cloud forms in the place where the fireball disappeared.
A meteor body bursting in at a speed of 15-20 km/sec. into the Earth's atmosphere, encounters very strong air resistance, already being 100-120 km from the Earth. There is an instantaneous compression and heating of the air in front of the meteor body - an “air cushion” is formed. The surface of the body itself heats up very strongly, reaching temperatures of the order of several thousand degrees. Just then the fireball flying across the sky becomes noticeable.
The substance on the surface of the car, while it sweeps through the atmosphere at enormous speed, melts under the influence of high temperature, boils and, turning into gas, is partially sprayed into tiny droplets. There is a continuous decrease in the meteoroid body, which seems to melt.
Evaporating and splashing particles form a trail that remains after the body flies. But now the car finds itself in a lower, denser atmospheric layer, where the air slows down its movement more and more. Finally, a body at a distance of 10-20 km from the earth’s surface loses its cosmic velocity. Something like it “gets stuck” in the air happens. This section of the path is called the delay region. The body of the meteorite stops heating and glowing. Due to the force of gravity, its unsprayed residue falls to the Earth like an ordinary thrown stone.
Meteorite falls occur very often. There is a high probability that several meteorites fall in different places on Earth every day. However, when they fall into oceans, seas, deserts, polar countries and other sparsely populated places, most of them remain unfound. Only a negligible number of meteorites, about 4-5 per year, become known to people. To date, about 1,600 meteorites have been found all over the globe, 125 of which were discovered in our country.
Flying at cosmic speed through the earth's atmosphere, meteorites, as a rule, cannot withstand the air pressure exerted on them, and break into many parts. In such cases, tens, or even hundreds of thousands of fragments fall to Earth, forming a meteor shower.
Many people think that a meteorite falls to Earth hot. However, it is not. It can be warm or hot, because it is in the earth’s atmosphere for only a few seconds, during which it does not have time to warm up and remains as cold inside as it was while flying in interplanetary space. Therefore, they cannot cause a fire when falling to the Earth, even if they hit flammable objects.
Space objects of natural origin falling to Earth most often burn up in the atmosphere. We have our dense atmosphere to thank for this. But she also sometimes has interruptions in her work. Especially when it comes to fairly large space objects. In this case, even the dense atmosphere does not always have time to incinerate the uninvited guest, and the “luckiest” ones fall to the ground. Having fallen to the surface, they can lie there for thousands of years, completely unnoticed by anyone. But in the end, glory comes in their lifetime.
Larger cosmic blocks are usually called asteroids. These guys are much more dangerous and capable of causing much more problems for Mother Earth than meteorites, and even more so meteoroids. Many have heard the story that about 65 million years ago, dinosaurs that lived and did not live on Earth suddenly suddenly went extinct. Rumor has it that this is the work of just one of them, or rather the consequences that he created. A similar story could have happened in 2013, but we were lucky, and the space object 2012 DA14 missed our planet at a distance of 27,743 km.
Today we will look at the “six” of the largest space rocks that fell on our planet, retained their integrity and were subsequently found by scientists.
Willamette
Photo of a meteorite taken at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1911
Willamette is the largest meteorite ever found in the United States. It weighs more than 15.5 tons and measures about 7.8 square meters. The Willamette is composed primarily of iron and nickel. Believed to have fallen to Earth about 1 billion years ago.
The meteorite has a rather interesting history. It was discovered by Welsh emigrant and miner Ellis Hughes in 1902, who immediately realized that there was more than just a large stone in front of him. As a result, he spent three months moving the find to his land. After that, he began charging visitors 25 cents for examining it. However, the fraud was quickly exposed, and the Oregon Steel Company received the right to the meteorite.
In 1905, the meteorite was purchased by a private individual for $26,000 and in 1906 donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where it is now on display for visitors to view. After its transfer, a tribe of Indians from Oregon claimed rights to the meteorite. They referred to the fact that the meteorite had become a kind of religious totem for them and was necessary for the annual ceremony. But since by this time the main structure of the museum had already been erected around the meteorite, it was impossible to transfer it without destroying the walls of the museum. As a result, the parties agreed that once a year members of the tribe are allowed to perform their rituals directly in the museum.
Mbozi
The Mbozi meteorite was discovered in Tanzania in 1930. It is about 3 meters in size and weighs 25 tons, that is, it is almost twice as heavy as Willamette. Mbozi is a sacred stone for the Tanzanians, who call it "kimondo" ("meteor" in Swahili).
Interestingly, no crater was found around Mbozi, which may indicate that he fell to Earth tangentially and, most likely, rolled from the site of his fall like a cobblestone. When Mbozi was discovered, it was partially sunk into the ground, so people first dug a hole near it, leaving a small area of earth directly under the stone itself, which later became its pedestal.
Analysis showed that Mbozi is 90 percent iron. About 8 percent of its composition is nickel. The rest is sulfur, copper and phosphorus. It is assumed that this meteorite fell to Earth several thousand years ago, but scientists are surprised by the fact that it has not undergone weathering or erosion during all this time. Scientists also note that it did not burn up in the atmosphere due to its size, and the fact that it remained intact during the fall is, on the contrary, due to insufficient mass for this.
Cape York
The Cape York meteorite is the third largest meteorite found on Earth. It fell on our planet about 10,000 years ago. Named after the site where the largest of its fragments, weighing 31 tons, was discovered on the island of Greenland. The dimensions are 3.4 x 2.1 x 1.7 m. Not far from it, two more fragments were found weighing 3 tons and 400 kilograms, respectively. However, the total weight of the meteorite is estimated at approximately 58.2 tons.
The first mention of this meteorite appeared in 1818. The Scottish navigator John Ross, who was searching for the Northern Sea Route and discovered a previously unknown Eskimo settlement, was surprised that people unfamiliar with metal processing used arrowheads and knives in their craft, apparently made of iron. The Eskimos told him that the source of the metal was a certain “iron mountain,” information about the location of which, unfortunately, was lost behind the veil of history. When analyzing the objects taken with them to England, it was found that they contained a very high concentration of nickel - higher than in any other natural source on Earth.
One of the fragments of the meteorite, called Anigito. There is an Eskimo nearby
Despite further numerous attempts to find the place where the meteorite fell, this was not possible until 1894. Then it was discovered by the American navigator and explorer Robert Peary, who, thanks to a brave Eskimo guide, went to the right place and discovered three fragments at once. They were later transported by ship to the American Museum of Natural History.
Other parts of the meteorite, including a 20-ton fragment called Agpalik, were found from 1911 to 1984. The meteorite is currently on display at the Geological Museum of the University of Copenhagen.
Bakubirito
The largest meteorite ever discovered in Mexico. It weighs approximately the same as Agpalik - about 20-22 tons - with dimensions of 4.25 x 2 x 1.75 m. It consists mainly of iron.
Bakubirito was discovered in 1893 by geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey, who, on assignment from the Chicago magazine Interocean to Central and South America, went to Mexico and dug up the meteorite with the help of local residents. Now on display at the Centro de Ciencias de Sinaloa Science Center.
El Chaco
El Chaco is the second largest meteorite discovered on Earth, weighing nearly twice as much as the Bacubirito meteorite. Interestingly, El Chaco is only one of the fragments of meteorites called Campo del Cielo. These guys are responsible for the formation of a crater with an area of 60 square kilometers in the Argentine town of the same name.
As mentioned above, El Chaco is the second largest meteorite on Earth. Its weight is 37 tons. It was discovered in 1969. Since he was buried underground, he was found using a metal detector.
There is an interesting story connected with this meteorite. One of the "meteorite hunters" named Robert Haag attempted to steal El Chaco, but was caught by a local Argentine police officer.
Not far from this site, another meteorite weighing almost 31 tons was discovered in 2016, which is believed to be one of the fragments of El Chaco.
Goba
And yet the title of the largest meteorite found belongs to the giant Goba. It was discovered in Namibia in 1920 by a farm owner who was plowing his land. Since then it has never been transported anywhere.
Gob's weight is almost twice that of El Chaco and is almost 66 tons. It is believed that it fell to Earth about 80,000 years ago. According to one theory, the meteorite did not go deep underground when it fell because of its shape - it is very flat.
Goba is considered to be the largest piece of naturally occurring iron on Earth. Its volume is 9 cubic meters. In 1955, the government of South West Africa declared this meteorite a national monument. In the 80s, the meteorite itself and the land on which it is located were donated to the state. Since then it has been a tourist attraction.
This global question can only be answered with a stretch, and even then in the subjunctive mood: “If...”. Last year was replete with predictions from astronomers on this topic. It was planned for February by the American department NASA the fall of a giant asteroid. Probably into the ocean, because it will cause a supertsunami. And closer to Great Britain, exciting the coastal residents.
What didn't happen in 2017?
So, this “if” meant that the space alien would either miss our Planet, or the fall would destroy the city. It blew by: a terrible stone flew past. But for some reason, only NASA knew about the threat. Then they scared the earthlings in March, October and December. In March, an asteroid hundreds of times larger than Chelyabinsk is expected to land on European cities. In October, asteroid TC4 with a diameter of 10–40 meters approached. If it is smaller, it will go unnoticed, but the larger one will leave a giant crater on the surface.
Based on such bodies, astronomers give approximate sizes on which the threat to us depends. And they are not blind, because asteroids glow in flight, and this conceals their size. In the atmosphere they partially burn, losing mass.
Better fly further
But fortunately, all the asteroids and meteoroids flew past Mother Earth. Or they lost significant weight in the atmosphere, turning into meteor showers, harmless and called “falling stars”. As happened with the December meteoroid, which could have fallen somewhere in the area of Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan or Samara. By the way, the infamous Chelyabinsk meteoroid (February 2013) flew almost along this trajectory, and the Yekaterinburg meteorite as well. Space rocks love this route!
Not all of them fly with a final stop on Earth, but many fly tangentially, hundreds of thousands of kilometers from it. Astronomers and astrophysicists take a close look at celestial bodies migrating throughout the Universe, because their flight orbits change. And after some time they may come to visit us.
When will a meteorite fall to Earth (video)
2018 is no exception for the fall of asteroids or meteoroids to Earth. It is difficult to predict this phenomenon in advance. As astronomers say, it is possible to accurately predict the fall when it enters the layers of the atmosphere and begins to disintegrate into meteor showers. If you look at the starfall calendar for the current year, it is no less than a year ago. Which of them will emerge from asteroids dangerous to earthlings is still only a matter of speculation.
Silent aliens from outer space - meteorites - flying to us from the stellar abyss and falling to Earth can have any size, from small pebbles to gigantic blocks. The consequences of such falls vary. Some meteorites leave behind vivid memories in our memory and a barely noticeable trace on the surface of the planet. Others, on the contrary, falling on our planet, entail catastrophic consequences.
The crash sites of the largest meteorites in the history of the Earth clearly demonstrate the true size of the uninvited guests. The surface of the planet has preserved huge craters and destruction left after encounters with meteorites, which indicates the possible disastrous consequences that await humanity if a large cosmic body falls to Earth.
Meteorites that fell on our planet
Space is not as deserted as it seems at first glance. According to scientists, 5-6 tons of space material fall on our planet every day. Over the course of a year, this figure is about 2,000 tons. This process occurs continuously, over billions of years. Our planet is constantly attacked by dozens of meteor showers, in addition, from time to time asteroids can fly towards the Earth, sweeping dangerously close to it.
Each of us can witness a meteorite fall at any moment. Some fall in front of us. In this case, the fall is accompanied by a whole series of bright and memorable phenomena. Other meteorites that we don't see fall in an unknown location. We learn about their existence only after we find fragments of material of extraterrestrial origin in the process of our life activity. In view of this, it is customary to divide space gifts that arrived at us at different times into two types:
- fallen meteorites;
- found meteorites.
Each fallen meteorite whose flight was predicted is given a name before falling. Found meteorites are named mainly by the place where they were found.
Information about how meteorites fell and what consequences arose is extremely limited. It was only in the middle of the 19th century that the scientific community began to track meteorite falls. The entire previous period in human history contains negligible facts about the fall of large celestial bodies to Earth. Such cases in the history of various civilizations are rather mythological in nature, and their description has nothing to do with scientific facts. In the modern era, scientists began to study the results of the fall of meteorites closest to us in time.
A huge role in the process of studying these astronomical phenomena is played by meteorites found on the surface of our planet in a later period. Today, a detailed map of meteorite falls has been compiled, identifying the areas where meteorites are most likely to fall in the future.
The nature and behavior of falling meteorites
Most of the celestial guests who visited our planet at different times are stone, iron and combined meteorites (iron-stone). The former are the most common occurrence in nature. These are residual fragments from which the planets of the Solar System were once formed. Iron meteorites are composed of naturally occurring iron and nickel, with the proportion of iron being more than 90%. The number of iron space guests that reached the surface layer of the earth's crust does not exceed 5-6% of the total.
Goba is by far the largest meteorite found on Earth. A huge block of extraterrestrial origin, an iron giant weighing 60 tons, fell to Earth in prehistoric times, and was found only in 1920. This space object has become known today only due to the fact that it consists of iron.
Stone meteorites are not such durable formations, but they can also reach large sizes. Most often, such bodies are destroyed during flight and upon contact with the ground, leaving behind huge craters and craters. Sometimes a stone meteorite is destroyed during its flight through the dense layers of the Earth's atmosphere, causing a powerful explosion.
This phenomenon is still fresh in the memory of the scientific community. The collision of planet Earth in 1908 with an unknown celestial body was accompanied by an explosion of colossal force that occurred at an altitude of about ten kilometers. This event took place in Eastern Siberia, in the basin of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. According to the calculations of astrophysicists, the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite in 1908 had a power of 10-40 Mt in terms of TNT equivalent. In this case, the shock wave circled the globe four times. For several days, strange phenomena occurred in the sky from the Atlantic to the Far East. It would be more correct to call this object the Tunguska meteoroid, since the cosmic body exploded above the surface of the planet. Research into the explosion area, which has been going on for more than 100 years, has given scientists a huge amount of unique scientific and applied material. The explosion of such a large celestial body, weighing hundreds of tons in the area of the Siberian river Podkamennaya Tunguska, is called the Tunguska phenomenon in the scientific world. To date, more than 2 thousand fragments of the Tunguska meteorite have been found.
Another space giant left behind the huge Chicxulub crater, located on the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico). The diameter of this giant depression is 180 km. The meteorite that left behind such a huge crater could have a mass of several hundred tons. It is not for nothing that scientists consider this meteorite to be the largest of all those that visited the Earth in its entire long history. No less impressive is the trace of a meteorite fall in the United States, the world-famous Arizona crater. Perhaps the fall of such a huge meteorite marked the beginning of the end of the era of dinosaurs.
Such destruction and such large-scale consequences are a consequence of the enormous speed of the meteorite rushing towards the Earth, its mass and size. A falling meteorite, whose speed is 10-20 kilometers per second and whose mass is tens of tons, is capable of causing colossal destruction and casualties.
Even smaller space guests that reach us can cause local destruction and cause panic among the civilian population. In the new era, humanity has repeatedly encountered such astronomical phenomena. In fact, everything except panic and excitement was limited to curious astronomical observations and subsequent study of meteorite fall sites. This happened in 2012 during the visit and subsequent fall of a meteorite with the beautiful name Sutter Mill, which, according to preliminary data, was ready to shred the territory of the United States and Canada. In several states at once, residents observed a bright flash in the sky. The subsequent flight of the fireball was limited to the fall on the earth's surface of a large number of small fragments scattered over a vast territory. A similar meteor shower occurred in China and was observed throughout the world in February 2012. In the desert regions of China, up to hundreds of meteorite stones of various sizes fell, leaving pits and craters of various sizes after the collision. The mass of the largest fragment found by Chinese scientists was 12 kg.
Such astrophysical phenomena occur regularly. This is due to the fact that meteor showers rushing through our solar system can from time to time cross the orbit of our planet. A striking example of such meetings are the regular meetings of the Earth with the Leonid meteor shower. Among the known meteor showers, it is the Leonids that the Earth is forced to encounter every 33 years. During this period, which falls according to the calendar in the month of November, the meteor shower is accompanied by the falling of debris to the Earth.
Our time and new facts about fallen meteorites
The second half of the 20th century became a real testing and experimental ground for astrophysicists and geologists. During this time, there were quite a lot of meteorite falls, which were recorded in various ways. Some celestial guests with their appearance created a sensation among scientists and caused considerable excitement among ordinary people; other meteorites became just another statistical fact.
Human civilization continues to be incredibly lucky. The largest meteorites that fell to Earth in the modern era were neither enormous in size nor caused serious damage to infrastructure. Space aliens continue to fall in sparsely populated areas of the planet, showering some of the debris. Cases of meteorite falls resulting in casualties are practically absent from official statistics. The only facts of such an unpleasant acquaintance are the fall of a meteorite in Alabama in 1954 and the visit of a space guest to the UK in 2004.
All other cases of collision of the Earth with celestial objects can be characterized as an interesting astronomical phenomenon. The most famous facts of meteorite falls can be counted on one hand. There is a lot of documentary evidence about these phenomena and a huge amount of scientific work has been carried out:
- the Kirin meteorite, whose mass is 1.7 tons, fell in March 1976 in the northeastern part of China during a meteor shower that lasted 37 minutes and covered the entire northeastern part of the country;
- in 1990, near the city of Sterlitamak, on the May night from the 17th to the 18th, a meteorite stone weighing 300 kg fell. The heavenly guest left behind a crater with a diameter of 10 meters;
- In 1998, a meteorite weighing 800 kg fell in Turkmenistan.
The beginning of the third millennium was marked by a number of striking astronomical phenomena, among which the following are especially worth noting:
- September 2002 was marked by a monstrous air explosion in the Irkutsk region, which was the result of the fall of a huge meteorite;
- a meteorite that fell on September 15, 2007 in the area of Lake Titicaca. This meteorite fell into Peru, leaving behind a crater 6 meters deep. The fragments of this Peruvian meteorite found by local residents had sizes in the range of 5-15 cm.
In Russia, the most striking case is associated with the flight and subsequent fall of a celestial guest near the city of Chelyabinsk. On the morning of February 13, 2013, news spread across the country: a meteorite fell in the area of Lake Chebarkul (Chelyabinsk region). The main force of the impact of the cosmic body was experienced by the surface of the lake, from which meteorite fragments with a total weight of more than half a ton were subsequently caught from a depth of 12 meters. A year later, the largest fragment of the Chebarkul meteorite, weighing several tons, was caught from the bottom of the lake. At the time of the meteorite's flight, it was observed by residents of three regions of the country. Eyewitnesses observed a huge fireball over the Sverdlovsk and Tyumen regions. In Chelyabinsk itself, the fall was accompanied by minor destruction of city infrastructure, but there were cases of injuries among the civilian population.
Finally
It is impossible to say exactly how many more meteorites will fall on our planet. Scientists are constantly working in the field of ensuring anti-meteorite safety. An analysis of recent phenomena in this area has shown that the intensity of visits to Earth by space guests has increased. Predicting falls in the future is one of the main programs carried out by specialists from NASA, other space agencies and scientific astrophysical laboratories. Still, our planet remains poorly protected from visits from uninvited guests, and a large meteorite falling to Earth can do its job - put an end to our civilization.
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