meteorite

Capitalism is certainly alive and well in today's Russia, as demonstrated by the growing number of attempts to cash in on the recent and much-recorded (thanks to the help of ubiquitous Russian dashboard cams) meteor strike in Siberia.

The meteor that broke up over the city of Chelyabinsk while also producing a window-shattering sonic boom and momentarily outshining the sun has become a cash cow for many opportunistic folks now offering up purported fragments of the space stone on eBay and elsewhere online.… Read more

Want to find out where every meteorite recorded since 2,300 B.C. has fallen on Earth? A new map will help you out.

Javier de la Torre, co-founder of software companies Vizzuality and CartoDB, has posted a heat map showing where the meteorites have fallen over the last several thousand years. According to The Verge, which first reported on the map and spoke with de la Torre, 34,513 individual impact points are recorded on the map.

De la Torre claims that it took him only 30 minutes to record the impacts. He used OpenStreetMap, a crowdsourced platform, for the map, and then input impact sites from data collected by the Meteorological Society.… Read more

A good hearty conspiracy theory can shine a sharp light on two of humanity's most enduring traits.

One, of course, is humanity's boundless imagination. The other is humanity's essential suspicion of humanity.

So while you might be deeply immersed in Bill Nye's explanation of the Russian meteorite, those with darker sensibilities have filled the Web with their fears and hauntings about the phenomenon.

There are few nations with greater awareness of dark sensibilities than Russia. The fact that there seems to be little evidence of meteorite fragments on the ground has encouraged some Russians to offer their own suspicions.… Read more

It's not easy to celebrate a near miss on the day of an actual hit.

Google discovered this yesterday. The company was very keen to offer another of its highly involving doodles for your weekend enjoyment.

Its nerd-leaning artists thought it might be fun to create a little something that cheered the fact that Asteroid 2012 DA14 wasn't going to strike Earth and create havoc.

Sadly, an ill-timed meteorite did strike Earth and create havoc.… Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Fiery meteor explodes over Russia's Ural Mountains; 1,100 injured as shock wave breaks windows.

- Watch asteroid 2012 DA14 fade out via streaming video.

- Iceland wants to ban Internet porn.

- Chubby Checker in a twist over an old app.

- One Direction's new toothbrush streams sound vibrations through your teeth.… Read more

The latest tally of meteorite-related injuries in Russia's Chelyabinsk region has reached about 1,000 -- most suffered from shards of glass that went flying when the meteor entered the atmosphere and sounded loud, window-shattering booms on its way to the ground earlier today.

Today has been an unusually active day for news involving big rocks from space. While the large Asteroid 2012 DA14 is passing closer to the surface of Earth than many of our satellites, an apparently unrelated meteorite streaked across the early morning Siberian sky, damaging buildings and thus injuring people in its path.

A Russian … Read more

A meteorite may have caused a series of powerful explosions about 900 miles east of Moscow that injured more than 100 people on Friday, Russian emergency officials say.

Witnesses said one meteorite damaged a zinc factory in the Chelyabinsk region and disrupted the city's Internet and mobile service. The blast reportedly set off a shock wave that broke nearby windows and set off car alarms.

"It was definitely not a plane," emergency officials told Reuters. "We are gathering the bits of information and have no data on the casualties so far."

Interior Ministry spokesman Vadim … Read more

There seems to be a slight gold rush going on in the very small town of Lotus, Calif.

Recently, a massive meteorite exploded over the town, so people have been flying in from all parts of the earthly world in order to claim their piece of otherworldly matter.

Brenda Salverson doesn't seem to have been caught up in this frenzy. However, as she walked her dog, there was this thing "sitting at my toes like an Easter egg."

Those were the words she used with CBS Sacramento, anyway.

It turned out to be a meteorite worth around $… Read more

Sandia National Laboratories researchers have concluded that the asteroid that spectacularly blasted trees over Tunguska, Siberia, on June 30, 1908, was much smaller than earlier estimates suggested.

A supercomputer simulation shows the asteroid's mass turned into an expanding jet of high-temperature gas traveling at supersonic speeds, the Albuquerque, N.M.-based lab said in a December statement.

"That such a small object can do this kind of destruction suggests that smaller asteroids are something to consider," principal investigator Mark Boslough said. His advice: "We should be making more efforts at detecting the smaller ones than we … Read more