h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Serious stuff good luck with the search I hope that your friends were not responsible for the loss.

Do let me know how you get on

I hope they find your friend, Florida Sailor.

Just happened to turn this up, actual video of the Feb 18, 2013 Chelyabinsk impact.

http://youtu.be/dpmXyJrs7iU

Most of the damage done was due to sonic booms produced by the the hypersonic object, almost white hot from its reentry velocity.

Thank Bob for the dashcam! These have not caught on in Ireland yet.

It didn't look as if there *was* an impact. The glow grew enormous, then shrank away to nothing.

There was a 654 kg nickel-iron object recovered from a nearby lake.

Though large, it wasn't the entirety of the object, estimated at about 20 meters in diameter, mostly dust and volatile materials.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteorite

That's about 2/3 as heavy as my car.

Think how much damage your car would have done hurtling through the upper atmosphere above Siberia at 35,000 mph!

Not to mention the fine on the speeding ticket

Did I read somewhere that a meteorite the size of a VW beetle would enough to destroy Birmingham, was that true

Well the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded with a force 50 times the Hiroshima A-bomb, but it was estimated to be 13,000 tons which is a lot of Volkswagen Beetles.

The main body of the meteor was represented by the visible trail it left in the sky, about 40km/25 miles away horizontally and about 30km/18.5 miles altitude from Chelyabinsk, where the videos were made.

Only the more solid and massive fragments hit the ground in recognizable form.

While I didn't watch the full ten minutes of that video, I was quite impressed by the wide range of angles that the various dash and security cameras captured. It gives on a sense of three dimensional perspective. Also seeing views from beyond the day/night terminator is interesting. Did the meteor strike at dawn or dusk? I believe it fell at dusk. That would lend itself to more people being active, hence more cameras capturing the event.

Has anyone made a virtual recreation of the event to view from above? That would be interesting, especially if it incorporated Google Map views.

Sorry, my car doesn't do air tricks.

Heh.

The Beatles were pretty meteoric.

They always talk about a meteoric 'rise', don't they? Meteors tend to fall, in my short experience.

Except in the Southern Hemisphere, where they rise to hit the ground.

Its all the same direction really, movement is movement. or not, if it isn't, of course.

I've just discovered a local group near where I live who practise/believe in alcamy

Al Camy is pretty believable.

Everything is believiable if one's the ability to believe I believe in the invisable army.