Tag: russian meteor 2013

Russian Meteorite will be used for 2014 Olympic Medals

Sochi-2014-Olympic-medalsOlympic athletes competing for the gold at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games can expect something truly out of this world if they win. According to media reports, the Russian government is planning on using pieces of the Chelyabinsk meteor that broke up over the remote community in the Urals during February of this year.

Scarcely anyone could forget that incident, where a 17 meter (55 foot) meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere and caused an airburst that damaged buildings, caused 1600 injuries and frightened every living thing in the region. As astronomers collecting fragments and calculating the orbit of the fireball, the incident directed attention towards the need to monitor space rocks that could threaten the Earth.

Russian_meteorAnd it now seems that the Russian government wants to turn that frightening and eye-opening incident into something positive and celebratory. Alexei Betekhtin, the Minister of Culture of the Chelyabinsk Region, had this to say on the subject:

We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day, because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are the global events.

Using the shards collected by the various scientific expeditions who’s job it was to recover and study the meteor, they have fashioned seven sets of gold medals. The reported sports that will receive these medals include:

  • Women’s 1,000 meter and men’s 1,500 meter short track
  • Men’s skeleton
  • Women’s cross-country skiing relay
  • Men’s K-125 ski jump
  • Men’s 1,500 meter speed skating
  • Women’s super giant slalom

Each one will feature a small chunk of the meteor contained within the gold frame. And it goes without saying that this is an historic first. To date, no single Olympic games has ever sought to include stellar material in any of their medals. Perhaps this is a sign of the times, where global and interstellar events come together so publicly.

Sochi-2014-Olympic-StadiumNo telling as to whether or not this decision was at all influenced by the negative publicity Russia has been getting for its anti-gay legislation in the lead up to the Olympics. Between people being jailed for joining gay advocacy groups and the government’s refusal to prosecute hate crimes committed against homosexuals, there are those who are arguing for a boycott of the Russian Olympics.

But controversy is hardly a new thing when it comes to the Olympics, especially where the human rights records of host nations are involved. For those old enough to remember, the US boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Four years later, the Soviets retaliated in kind by boycotting the Olympics being held in Los Angeles.

And of course, one has to remember that Beijing hosted the Summer Games back in 2008, and if human rights were ever a reason to boycott the games, this would have been a prime opportunity to stand on principle. Personally, I think the Russian government needs to get its head out of its ass and join the post-Medieval era, but I suppose political pressure will have to come from sources other than the Olympic committee.

Source: universetoday.com, en.rian.ru

Origins of Russian Meteor Found!

meteorJust over a week after a meteor exploded across the sky above the Chelyabinsk region of Russia, a group of astronomers published a paper that reconstructs where the rock came from. The men in question were Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia. And the method they used was quite unconventional, and is perhaps a testament to the age we live in.

Basically, Zuluaga and Ferrin used the many sources of dashboard and security cameras that captured the event on film. Using the trajectories shown in the videos posted on YouTube, the researchers were able to calculate the trajectory of the meteorite as it fell to Earth and use it to reconstruct the orbit of the meteoroid before its fell to Earth and cause the shockwave that damaged buildings and shattered windows.

From their calculations, they were able to determine the height, speed and position of the meteorite as it fell to Earth. According to the team’s paper:

“…the Chelyabinski meteor started to brighten up when it was between 32 and 47 km up in the atmosphere. The velocity of the body predicted by our analysis was between 13 and 19 km/s (relative to the Earth) which encloses the preferred figure of 18 km/s assumed by other researchers.”

They then used software developed by the US Naval Observatory (called NOVAS) and the Naval Observatory Vector Astrometry to calculate the likely orbit. From all this, they came to the preliminary conclusion that the meteorite came from the Apollo class of asteroids, a well-known class of rocks that cross Earth’s orbit.

This conclusion has some worried, since the Apollo group, which orbits the Sun in the vicinity of Venus and Earth, contains over 2000 asteroids that are larger than 1 km in diameter. And considering that this one meteor, which measured between 17 and 20 meters, caused 1491 injuries and damage to over 4000 buildings in the area.

Lucky for us, NASA and every other space agency on the planet has some defensive strategies in mind. And of course, early warning is always the most important aspect of disaster preparedness. In the near future, we can expect some of the proposed observation satellites that will be going up to ensure there will be a better degree of early warning.

Source: universetoday.com