A meteorite that is about to fall. What will happen if an asteroid hits Earth? Largest meteor shower

The Ural meteorite distracted scientists for some time from another space object - an asteroid, which is approaching the Earth at these moments. According to calculations, it will approach its minimum distance to our planet at 23:20 Moscow time. This unique event will be broadcast live on NASA's website. Residents of Asia and Australia, as well as possibly some areas of Eastern Europe, will be able to see the asteroid.

In a little more than 2 hours, the DA14 object will pass by the Earth at a distance of 28 thousand kilometers - this is closer than some satellites fly. If this asteroid weighing 130 tons and with a diameter of 45 meters collided with our planet, the explosion would be equal to one thousand Hiroshimas. There was even an assumption that the meteorite that fell in the Urals could be part of this space monster and that other, larger ones would follow. However, most scientists do not see a connection with the DA14 asteroid and the Ural meteorite.

“As for whether Armageddon threatens us or not, it is now known for certain. All asteroids larger than one kilometer in diameter that bring such a catastrophe to the Earth on a large scale, they are all known and have well-known orbits, they are all cataloged and observed There is no danger from them,” assured Lidia Rykhlova, head of the department of space astrometry at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

While they were monitoring the large asteroid, they overlooked the meteorite that fell in the Urals. However, it was almost impossible to see it before entering the atmosphere - neither civilian observatories nor missile defense radars can do this - the size is too small and the speed is too high. The military says that even if such a meteorite is discovered, modern air defense systems are not yet capable of destroying such objects. Already in retrospect, scientists derived data from a celestial body that had already fallen in the Urals - mass several tons, speed 15 kilometers per second, angle of incidence - 45 degrees, shock wave power - several kilotons. At an altitude of 50 kilometers, the object collapsed into 3 parts and almost completely burned up in the atmosphere.

“No more than 10 meters in diameter, it flew at supersonic speed and therefore generated a shock wave. This shock wave caused all this destruction, people were injured not by meteorite fragments, but by the shock wave. Now, if a supersonic plane would have passed on the same altitude, for example, God forbid above Moscow, the destruction would have been the same,” said the deputy director of the State Astronomical Institute. Sternberg Sergey Lamzin.

Any space object that reaches the Earth's atmosphere and leaves a trace in it is called a meteorite by scientists. As a rule, they are small in size and, moving in the air at a speed of several kilometers per second, completely burn out. And yet, about 5 tons of cosmic matter fall to Earth every day in the form of dust and small grains of sand. Almost all space guests come to us from the so-called asteroid belt, which is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

“A kind of trash heap of the Solar system, where all the debris is concentrated. Collisions between asteroids occur in this belt. As a result, certain debris is formed that can acquire an orbit that intersects the orbit of the Earth,” said Mikhail Nazarov.

However, some scientists believe that it was not a meteorite that fell near Chelyabinsk. They are confident that no one will ever find any debris, just as the fragments of the Tunguska meteorite were not found. We are most likely talking about a cooled comet, which consists of frozen gases.

“If the nucleus of a first-generation comet invades the Earth, then it burns up almost completely in the Earth’s atmosphere, and it is impossible to find any remains on the surface. This is similar to the Tunguska phenomenon, when no remains of the body were found, but there was a large fall of forest over a large area and the trees were all heavily charred,” said Vladislav Leonov, a researcher at the Department of Space Astrometry at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Nevertheless, the search for meteorite remains near Chelyabinsk continues. At the same time, not only rescuers and scientists are searching; now dozens of meteorite hunters have already rushed to the area of the supposed fall. The price of some of them on the black market can reach several thousand rubles per gram.

Planet Earth is constantly exposed to dangers because there are asteroid belts nearby. According to scientists, there are about 17 thousand dangerous objects near the planet, and their fall to Earth can cause serious problems for the planet's population.

Our planet has a powerful gravitational field, and the fall of a meteorite on it is reduced to zero, but scientists never exclude this possibility. Scientists have discovered that asteroids may still fall on Earth next year.

Researchers analyzed the information and compiled a list of meteorites that may threaten our planet. According to experts, 90 celestial bodies will fly past the Earth in the new year and 13 of them have become a threat to the Earth.

The first ones to approach the Earth in January are “306383 1993 VD” and “2003 CA4”. Also, quite large asteroids are expected in February, these are the 400-meter “2015 BN509” and the 100-meter “2014 WQ202” and most of the celestial bodies will fly near our planet in May and November.

But the greatest danger is posed by the asteroid “2015 DP155”, which will fly by early in the morning of June 11, 2018. It always moves in the outer orbit of Mars, but once every two hundred years it moves closer to the sun. Therefore, it will not be difficult for him to approach the Earth. It still has quite a size of about 280 meters, in order to completely burn out in the earth’s atmosphere.

According to researchers, there are a lot of large asteroids in the solar system, and all of them pose a danger to our planet, reports the Rosregistr portal. According to experts, collisions of large celestial bodies with each other also pose a danger to the Earth's population. According to them, particles will enter the atmosphere and will leave ozone holes, this will lead to high levels of direct sunlight hitting the surface.

Scientists say that a collision between Earth and an asteroid is a very rare occurrence. Huge cataclysms on our planet have happened several times throughout the history of mankind. One of the most powerful cataclysms is the fall of a meteorite, which destroyed dinosaurs and some other representatives of the earth's fauna. There was also a case of a meteorite falling in Ancient Egypt, but it was mentioned only in the chronicles.

The likelihood of a person dying from a collision between the Earth and an asteroid or other celestial body can be compared to dying in a car accident. And yet it will depend on the size of the celestial body. That is, if we are talking about a sufficiently large object, then it will only affect one continent.

This means that there can be no talk of any apocalypse. A meteorite falling into the ocean poses a great danger to the world's population. In this case, this cataclysm can cause a tsunami, and this in turn will cause enormous destruction. According to experts, the likelihood of asteroids and comets colliding with oceans and seas is much higher than with the earth’s surface.

The development of technologies, with the help of which it became possible to study space in detail, has allowed humanity to learn a lot of information about the space surrounding our planet. As it turned out, many objects move around the Earth: these are not only stars, there are a large number of smaller celestial bodies called asteroids. But, despite the fact that in size they cannot be compared with even the smallest known planet, for humanity they are the most dangerous space formations. Moreover, history knows asteroids falling to earth in past.

Recently, reports about objects that may soon collide with the Earth have begun to appear in the media with noticeable frequency. In 2013, Apophis approached Earth, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most dangerous asteroid. Today the Internet is full of messages about an approaching celestial body called Florence. However, scientists report: this time everything will go fine and there will be no collision.

But the approach of bodies to our planet does not always end so happily. Some of them still overcome the atmosphere and fall to the earth's surface.

Asteroids falling to earth. Huge crater in Africa

Photo: economictimes.indiatimes.com

When the Solar System was very young, collisions between objects of different sizes were not a rare occurrence. Proof of this is the surface of the Moon and planets that lack a “natural shield” - an atmosphere.

Our planet has also seen many similar disasters in its lifetime. Scientists have discovered traces of the oldest of them. The cosmic body that “kissed” the Earth 3.3 billion years ago was truly gigantic in size - its diameter was about 50 km. For comparison, the famous Apophis, which humanity feared quite recently, is only 250-400 meters in diameter.

Photo: antikleidi.com

An asteroid that fell in South Africa caused colossal destruction. A shift of tectonic plates, an earthquake that reached a power of 10 points, a tsunami, and the earth’s surface burned for thousands of kilometers are horrifying phenomena for which scientists are still finding evidence.

Asteroids falling to earth. Sudbury - the source of Canada's wealth

Photo: Roogirl.com

The “space bomb” that hit Earth about 1.8 billion years ago pierced the earth’s crust to the mantle, turning the inner layers to the surface. Its fragments scattered over a huge distance.

But modern inhabitants of the planet, born much later than the disaster, were even able to benefit from the collision. The Sudbury region is one of the largest mineral deposits in Canada. And the soil, rich in minerals left behind by the magma, is ideal for agriculture.

Asteroids falling to earth. Chiklusub - the death of dinosaurs

Photo: Isbn-10.xyz

66 million years ago, the Earth was completely different from what we see today. It was inhabited by creatures that can now only be seen in films. At that time, dinosaurs were the masters of the planet.

For a long time, no one could understand what caused the extinction of the dominant species at that time. It was only in the 20th century that it was suggested that the disappearance of many thousands of living beings was a consequence of the fall of a huge celestial body.
Photo: Dinocreta.com

It is believed that the Earth collided with a very large asteroid. The impact of enormous force provoked many disasters that led to the almost complete disappearance of life. Of course, a small part of living creatures (mostly small in size) were able to adapt to the dramatically changed conditions. But the dinosaurs disappeared forever.

The site of the asteroid impact is a crater located near the city of Chiklusub, which received the same name as this settlement. Judging by its size, the body that collided with the ground had a diameter of 10 km.

Asteroids falling to earth. Tunguska meteorite - the mystery of the century

Photo: Baricada.ro

At the beginning of the 20th century, or more precisely in 1908, a space object rushed to the surface of the earth, which later became known as the Tunguska meteorite. Residents of settlements located in the immediate vicinity of the crash site could observe many unusual phenomena associated with this event: nights as bright as day, thunder in a cloudless sky and a grand explosion.

But the crater from the fall of the celestial body was never discovered. This fact caused a great resonance in the scientific community. Scientists have put forward many theories, ranging from the landing of an alien ship to the fall of an icy comet. None of them have yet been recognized as official.

Asteroids falling to earth. Chelyabinsk disaster

Photo: News.pn

An unexpected event happened on February 15, 2013. An unnoticed asteroid flew up to the Earth and collided with its surface in the region of Chelyabinsk, one of the largest industrial centers in Russia.

Photo: Chinadaily.com.cn

The fact that the appearance of this celestial object was not predicted by scientists is explained by the fact that it approached our planet from the direction of the Sun, and it was impossible to notice it through a telescope. It’s scary to even think what would have happened if the size of the asteroid were not 6 m in diameter, but much larger. After all, even the explosion of such a relatively small cosmic body is several dozen times greater than the explosion of a nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, although its consequences were not as catastrophic.

The end of the world is often associated with a collision with a large asteroid. We can only hope that humanity will never see such a catastrophe. But, given the number of objects that fly dangerously close to the Earth every year, the likelihood that someday a large meteorite will still crash into it is very high.

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We have been prophesied many times about the End of the World according to the scenario that a meteorite, an asteroid will fall on Earth and smash everything to smithereens. But it did not fall, although small meteorites fell.

Could a meteorite still fall on Earth and destroy all life? What asteroids have already fallen on Earth and what consequences did this entail? Today we’ll talk about this.

By the way, the next End of the World is predicted for us in October 2017!!

Let's first understand what a meteorite, meteoroid, asteroid, comet is, at what speed they can hit the Earth, for what reason the trajectory of their fall is directed to the surface of the Earth, what destructive power meteorites carry, taking into account the speed of the object and mass.

Meteroid

“A meteoroid is a celestial body intermediate in size between cosmic dust and an asteroid.

A meteoroid flying into the Earth's atmosphere at great speed (11-72 km/s) heats up greatly due to friction and burns, turning into a luminous meteor (which can be seen as a “shooting star”) or a fireball. The visible trace of a meteoroid entering the Earth's atmosphere is called a meteor, and a meteoroid falling on the Earth's surface is called a meteorite."

Cosmic dust- small celestial bodies that burn in the atmosphere and are initially small in size.

Asteroid

“An asteroid (a common synonym until 2006 was a minor planet) is a relatively small celestial body of the Solar System moving in orbit around the Sun. Asteroids are significantly smaller in mass and size than planets, have an irregular shape and do not have an atmosphere, although they may also have satellites.”

Comet

“Comets are like asteroids, but they are not lumps, but frozen floating swamps. They mostly live at the edge of the solar system, forming the so-called Oort cloud, but some fly to the Sun. As they approach the Sun, they begin to melt and evaporate, forming behind them a beautiful tail glowing in the sun's rays. Among superstitious people they are considered harbingers of misfortune.”

Bolide- a bright meteor.

Meteor — “(Ancient Greek μετέωρος, “heavenly”), “shooting star” is a phenomenon that occurs when small meteoroids (for example, fragments of comets or asteroids) burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.”

And finally, the meteorite:“A meteorite is a body of cosmic origin that fell on the surface of a large celestial object.

Most meteorites found have a mass of several grams to several kilograms (the largest meteorite found is Goba, which was estimated to weigh about 60 tons). It is believed that 5-6 tons of meteorites fall to the Earth per day, or 2 thousand tons per year.”

All relatively large celestial bodies that enter the Earth's atmosphere burn up before reaching the surface, and those that reach the surface are called meteorites.

Now think about the numbers: “5-6 tons of meteorites fall on the Earth per day, or 2 thousand tons per year”!!! Imagine, 5-6 tons, but we rarely hear reports that someone was killed by a meteorite, why?

Firstly, small meteorites fall, such that we don’t even notice, many fall on uninhabited lands, and secondly: cases of death from a meteorite strike are not excluded, type in a search engine, in addition, meteorites have repeatedly fallen near people, on dwellings (Tunguska bolide, Chelyabinsk meteorite, meteorite falling on people in India).

Every day over 4 billion cosmic bodies fall to Earth, This is the name given to everything that is larger than cosmic dust and smaller than an asteroid - this is what sources of information about the life of the Cosmos say. Basically, these are small stones that burn up in the layers of the atmosphere before reaching the earth's surface; a few pass this line; they are called meteorites, whose total weight per day is several tons. Meteoroids that do reach Earth are called meteorites.

A meteorite falls to Earth at a speed of 11 to 72 km per second; during the process of enormous speed, the celestial body heats up and glows, which causes part of the meteorite to “blow”, reducing its mass, sometimes dissolving, especially at a speed of about 25 km per second or more . When approaching the surface of the planet, the surviving celestial bodies slow down their trajectory, falling vertically, and as a rule they cool down, which is why there are no hot asteroids. If a meteorite breaks apart along the “road,” a so-called meteor shower can occur, when many small particles fall to the ground.

At a low speed of the meteorite, for example a few hundred meters per second, the meteorite is able to retain the same mass. Meteorites are stony (chondrites (carbonaceous chondrites, ordinary chondrites, enstatite chondrites)

achondrites), iron (siderites) and iron-stone (pallasites, mesosiderites).

“The most common meteorites are stony meteorites (92.8% of falls).

The vast majority of stony meteorites (92.3% of stony meteorites, 85.7% of total falls) are chondrites. They are called chondrites because they contain chondrules - spherical or elliptical formations of predominantly silicate composition.”

Chondrites in the photo

Mostly meteorites are about 1 mm, maybe a little more... In general, smaller than a bullet... Perhaps there are a lot of them under our feet, perhaps they fell right before our eyes once, but we did not notice it.

So, what happens if a large meteorite falls to the Earth, does not crumble into stone rain, does not dissolve in the layers of the atmosphere?

How often does this happen and what are the consequences?

Fallen meteorites were discovered by finds or by falls.

For example, according to official statistics, the following number of meteorite falls was recorded:

in 1950-59 - 61, on average 6.1 meteorite falls per year,

in 1960-69 - 66, on average 6.6 per year,

in 1970-79 - 61, average per year 6.1,

in 1980-89 - 57, average per year 5.7,

in 1990-99 - 60, on average 6.0 per year,

in 2000-09 - 72, average per year 7.2,

in 2010-16 - 48, on average 6.8 per year.

As we can see even from official data, the number of meteorite falls has been increasing in recent years and decades. But, naturally, we don’t mean 1mm-thick celestial bodies...

Meteorites weighing from several grams to several kilograms fell to Earth in countless quantities. But there were not so many meteorites weighing more than a ton:

The Sikhote-Alin meteorite weighing 23 tons fell to the ground on February 12, 1947 in Russia, in the Primorsky Territory (classification - Zhelezny, IIAB),

Girin - a meteorite weighing 4 tons fell to the ground on March 8, 1976 in China, in the province of Girin (classification - H5 No. 59, chondrite),

Allende - a meteorite weighing 2 tons fell to the ground on February 8, 1969 in Mexico, Chihuahua (classification CV3, chondrite),

Kunya-Urgench - a meteorite weighing 1.1 tons fell to the ground on June 20, 1998 in Turkmenistan, in the city in the North-East of Turkmenistan - Tashauz (classification - chondrite, H5 No. 83),

Norton County - a meteorite weighing 1.1 tons fell to the ground on February 18, 1948 in the USA, Kansas (Aubrit classification),

Chelyabinsk - a meteorite weighing 1 ton fell to the ground on February 15, 2013 in Russia, in the Chelyabinsk region (chondrite classification, LL5 No. 102†).

Of course, the closest and most understandable meteorite to us is the Chelyabinsk meteorite. What happened when the meteorite fell? A series of shock waves during the destruction of a meteorite over the Chelyabinsk region and Kazakhstan, the largest of the fragments weighing about 654 kg was raised from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul in October 2016.

On February 15, 2013, at approximately 9:20 a.m., fragments of a small asteroid collided with the earth’s surface, which collapsed as a result of braking in the Earth’s atmosphere; the largest fragment weighed 654 kg; it fell into Lake Chebarkul. The superbolide collapsed in the vicinity of Chelyabinsk at an altitude of 15-25 km, the bright glow from the burning of the asteroid in the atmosphere was noticed by many residents of the city, someone even decided that the plane had crashed or a bomb had fallen, this was the main version of the media in the first hours. The largest meteorite known after the Tunguska meteorite. The amount of released energy, according to experts, ranged from 100 to 44 kilotons of TNT equivalent.

According to official data, 1,613 people were injured, mainly from broken glass from houses damaged by the explosion, about 100 people were hospitalized, two ended up in intensive care, the total amount of damage caused to buildings was about 1 billion rubles.

The Chelyabinsk meteoroid, according to NASA's preliminary estimates, was 15 meters in size and weighed 7,000 tons - these are its data before entering the Earth's atmosphere.

Important factors for assessing the potential danger of meteorites to the earth are the speed with which they approach the earth, their mass, and composition. On the one hand, the speed can destroy the asteroid into small fragments even before the earth’s atmosphere, on the other hand, it can give a powerful blow if the meteorite still reaches the ground. If an asteroid flies with less force, the probability of its mass being preserved is greater, but the force of its impact will not be so terrible. It is the combination of factors that is dangerous: the conservation of mass at the highest speed of the meteorite.

For example, a meteorite weighing more than a hundred tons hitting the ground at the speed of light can cause irreparable destruction.

Information from the documentary.

If you launch a round diamond ball with a diameter of 30 meters towards the Earth at a speed of 3 thousand km per second, then the air will begin to participate in nuclear fusion and, under the heating of the plasma, this process can destroy the diamond sphere even before it reaches the surface of the Earth: information from scientific films, according to scientists' projects. However, the chances that the diamond ball, even if broken, will reach the Earth are great; during the impact, a thousand times more energy will be released than from the most powerful nuclear weapon, and after that the area in the area of the fall will be empty, the crater will be large, but the Earth has seen more. This is at 0.01 of the speed of light.

What will happen if you accelerate the sphere to 0.99% of the speed of light? Superatomic energy will begin to operate, the diamond ball will become just a collection of carbon atoms, the sphere will flatten into a pancake, each atom in the ball will carry 70 billion volts of energy, it passes through the air, air molecules pierce through the center of the ball, then get stuck inside, it expands and reaches the Earth with a greater content of matter than at the beginning of the journey, when it crashes into the surface, it will pierce the Earth crooked and wide, creating a cone-shaped road through the root rock. The energy of the collision will tear a hole in the Earth's crust and explode into a crater so large that the molten mantle can be seen through it, an impact comparable to the 50 impacts of the Chicxulub asteroid, which killed the dinosaurs in the era BC. It is quite possible the end of all life on Earth, or at least the extinction of all people.

What will happen if we add more speed to our diamond sphere? Up to 0.9999999% of the speed of light? Now each carbon molecule carries 25 trillion wills of energy (!!!), which is comparable to the particles inside the large hadron collider, all of this will hit our planet with approximately the kinetic energy of the Moon moving in orbit, this is enough to punch a huge hole in the mantle and shake the earth's surface of the planet so that it simply melts, this with a 99.99% probability will put an end to all life on Earth.

Let's add more speed to the diamond ball up to 0.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light, This is the highest speed of an object with mass ever recorded by man. Particle “Oh my God!”

The Oh-My-God particle is a cosmic shower caused by ultra-high energy cosmic rays, discovered on the evening of October 15, 1991 at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah using the Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector. "(English) owned by the University of Utah. The energy of the particle that caused the shower was estimated to be 3 × 1020 eV (3 × 108 TeV), about 20 million times greater than the energy of particles emitted by extragalactic objects, in other words, the atomic nucleus had a kinetic energy equivalent to 48 joules.

This is the energy of a 142-gram baseball moving at a speed of 93.6 kilometers per hour.

The Oh-My-God particle had such high kinetic energy that it moved through space at approximately 99.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light."

This proton from Space, which “lit up” the atmosphere over Utah in 1991 and moved almost at the speed of light, the cascade of particles that were formed from its movement could not be reproduced even by the LHC (collider), such phenomena are detected several times a year and no one doesn't understand what it is. It seems to be coming from a galaxy-wide explosion, but what happened to cause these particles to come to Earth in such a hurry and why they did not slow down remains a mystery.

And if the diamond ball moves at the speed of the “Oh, my God!” particle, then nothing will help and no computer technology will simulate the development of events in advance; this plot is a godsend for dreamers and blockbuster creators.

But the picture will look something like this: a diamond ball rushes through the atmosphere, not noticing it and disappearing into the earth's crust, a cloud of expanding plasma with radiation diverges from the entry point, while energy pulsates outward through the body of the planet, as a result the planet becomes heated, begins to glow, the Earth will be knocked out into another orbit Naturally, all living things will die.

Taking into account the picture of the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which we recently observed, the scenarios of the fall of meteorites (diamond balls) from the film presented in the article, the plots of science fiction films - we can assume that:

- the fall of a meteorite, despite all the assurances of scientists that it is realistic to predict the fall of a large celestial body to Earth in decades, taking into account the achievements in the field of astronautics, cosmonautics, astronomy - in some cases it is impossible to predict!! And the proof of this is the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which no one predicted. And the proof of this is the particle “Oh, my God!” with their protons over Utah in '91... As they say, we don’t know what hour or day the end will come. However, humanity has been living and living for several thousand years now...

- first of all, we should expect small meteorites, and the destruction will be similar to that of the Chelyabinsk meteorite: glass will burst, buildings will be destroyed, perhaps part of the area will be scorched...

It’s hardly worth expecting terrible consequences as with the supposed death of dinosaurs, but it can’t be ruled out either.

- it is impossible to protect yourself from the forces of Space, unfortunately, meteorites make it clear to us that we are only small people on a small planet in a vast Universe, therefore it is impossible to predict the outcome, the time of contact of an asteroid with the earth, piercing the atmosphere more and more actively every year, Space seems to be claiming to our territory. Get ready or don’t get ready, but if the forces of heaven send an asteroid to our Earth, there’s no corner you can hide in…. So meteorites are also sources of deep philosophy and rethinking of life.

And here's another news!! We have just recently been prophesied about another End of the World!!! October 12, 2017, that is, we have very little time left. Presumably. A huge asteroid is rushing towards Earth!! This information is all over the news, but we are so used to such cries that we don’t react... what if...

According to scientists, the Earth already has holes and cracks, it is burning at the seams... If an asteroid reaches it, and a huge one, as predicted, it simply will not survive. You can only be saved by being in a bunker.

Wait and see.

There are opinions of psychologists that such intimidation is an attempt by any means to instill fear in humanity and control it in this way. The asteroid is indeed planning to pass by the Earth soon, but it will pass very far, there is a one in a million chance that it will hit the Earth.