Meteor Shower hits Russia!!

[Galactica]

I don't get why astronomers didn't see it coming and notify the authorities to evacuate the area?

That's what I thought when I heard of it!  But if a meteor the size of a car is to small to pick up- I guess any one of us could be randomly smashed by a meteor at any time- 

[SourdoughStomper]

Not only was it small, but it was fast! It was traveling at 33,000 mph. That would probably be very hard to catch sight of in advance.

[starrypawz]

I don't get why astronomers didn't see it coming and notify the authorities to evacuate the area?

From what I understand it was actually pretty small so they may have not picked it up.

That, the meteor was about 10 tons, so about the size of a car.  Plus, especially with something of that size, I would imagine getting an accurate evacuation area would be extremely difficult.  Making predictions about things like this is terribly difficult, and it can be a darned if you do darned if you don't sort of situation, providing they even knew something this small was coming.

But I'm thinking it's small enough that they didn't even pick it up.

Really interesting to see, I'm glad no one was killed.

That's what I meant it was 'small' in astronomical terms so it wouldn't really register on the radar as it were.

[HavACrumpet452]

I don't think at 19 miles a second they could evacuate or even know where it would hit. Its a pain to read all the different news stories with all the conflicting info. They should just admit they don't have all the info the second things happen.

[TrixieStix]

Wow! That would be scary to hear that sound as it passed by. (Like the second video made me feel )
I hope everyone who was hurt won't be too seriously injured by this. 

I would probably want to look out a window too and then get glass in my face

The fireball part looked pretty from afar, but yikes nonetheless...thanks for sharing. 

[banditpony]

): I feel bad for all those people who ran to their windows to see it, and then the windows exploded...

u__u; I would also run to a window if I saw something strange outside...

[ZennaBug]

Wow!    I'm glad nobody was killed, that's pretty scary!

I saw something like that once when I was camping, it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life.  It shot across the sky, broke into three smaller pieces, and then the pieces kept going until they passed beyond the horizon.  I wish that I'd had a camera phone way back then, so I could have recorded it.  It's a memory I will have until I die.

[Loa]

The pictures are amazing.
It reminds me how fragile our planet is!

[OLumeVaSti]

I feel bad it reminded me of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=facicvxTMvE

[BlackCurtains]

The thing that's really neat is it's not unusual. These fireballs happen everyday, but normally over the ocean or higher the arctic where no one sees it. To capture it on film is really the amazing part!

[flutterwry]

It's so incredibly beautiful - and absolutely scary at the same time.

Despite injuring several hundreds of people and shattering thousands of windows, things could have been so much worse, and I am grateful there are (at least to my knowledge) no deaths, and apparently this lake and this place (both of which are located in this region) were apparently not struck by the meteors (according to Russian officials)
No, I'd rather not think about what could have happened in such a case!

[RedKitsune]

I thought from the pictures I was looking at the sun...then I realized it was meteor. I was like...ohhh x_x; Funny, it looks just like a picture from Armageddon movie. I would have flipped out.