New estimates reported by NASA indicate that the meteor that rocked Chelyabinsk, Russia last week was the largest to hit the earth in more than a century. While early estimates placed the 55-foot meteor in the 10-ton range, the actual size was closer to 10,000 tons, and the energy released during the event was in the neighborhood of 500 kilotons. As The Wall Street Journal points out, that’s more than 30 times the size of the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima. The previous largest meteor impact was the 1908 event in Tunguska, Siberia.
The Voice of Russia reports that a total of 1,200 people have been injured and 3,724 buildings damaged by the impact, with a combined 200,000 square meters (2.15 million square feet) of shattered...
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