Most of us have at one time or another watched a meteor shower or seen a “shooting star” and thought “what a spectacular sight”. Sometimes we will here about the damage these falling objects can cause but unless we actually see it we don't think anything about it. People around the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia found out first hand just how dangerous these meteoroids can actually be when one exploded today over the Ural mountains spreading destruction and injures for miles. Since then several videos have been uploaded to the web letting us see this danger for ourselves.
"I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it were day," said Viktor Prokofiev, 36, a resident of Yekaterinburg in the Urals Mountains.
The reports started coming in this morning shortly after 9:00 a.m. PST about witness that saw a meteoroid streaking across the sky and then exploding. The explosion sent out fireballs and shock waves shattering windows and twisting frames in some 3.000 buildings, breaking windshields and injuring over 1,000 people. Along with all of the destruction, cellular service was disrupted leaving those that caught in the middle of the event unable to get in touch with emergency services, work, friends or family.
"I was standing at a bus stop, seeing off my girlfriend," said Andrei, a local resident who did not give his second name. "Then there was a flash and I saw a trail of smoke across the sky and felt a shock wave that smashed windows."
Meteoroids are a common occurrence as pebble or smaller ones are constantly entering our atmosphere. To have one in the 10 ton weight range is quite a rarity. The last time a meteoroid exploded was in the fall of last year when a meteoroid weighing approximately 154,300 pounds exploded scattering small meteorites across the south-west region of the United States. The last one to happen over Russia was a huge meteoroid that leveled millions of trees over 830 square miles of Siberia.
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