MicroFactzzz#0077 · ☠️ Dark Facts
A meteor exploded over a Russian city and injured over a thousand people before anyone even noticed it
In 2013, a small asteroid entered the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, creating a shockwave that shattered thousands of windows.
On February 15, 2013, an object roughly 20 meters across entered the atmosphere over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk without anyone detecting it beforehand — it was moving too fast and approached from the direction of the sun, which made it impossible to spot.
The object exploded in the air at an altitude of several dozen kilometers with a force estimated at several hundred kilotons of TNT, producing a flash brighter than the sun and a shockwave that reached the ground several minutes later.
The shockwave shattered windows in thousands of buildings, and flying glass injured over 1,500 people — most of the injuries happened because people had rushed to their windows to see the extraordinary flash in the sky, just before the sound wave arrived.
The significance: the Chelyabinsk event reminded the world that objects of this size can still slip past early warning systems — and pushed space agencies to ramp up their programs for monitoring near-Earth asteroids.
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Krulicza Nora
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