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There probably is a nuclear blast in that mix. They stated that anti-missile systems intercepted it - the only thing with a hope in hell of reaching and destroy
by madaxe 14y ago
There probably is a nuclear blast in that mix. They stated that anti-missile systems intercepted it - the only thing with a hope in hell of reaching and destroying/breaking a meteor is the 53T6 Gazelle, which has a 10kt warhead.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoAs far as I know the only active ABM system in Russia is around Moscow. Chelyabinsk is not anywhere near the Moscow Oblast.
- madaxe 14y agoThey've got them peppered through the Urals. Lots of Cold War silos in that neck of the woods, and definitely active ABMs - saw them being driven just outside of astrakhan in the dead of night last year. Also, kaz is full of Russian military hardware. Baikonur for instance is definitely covered by ABMs, as to not do so would be an untenable risk as far as Russia is concerned.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoAre you certain? This would be news to the world. For reference, here's what an ABM transporter looks like: http://www.ausairpower.net/PVO-S/53T6-SH-08-Gazelle-ABM-TL-1S.jpg http://www.ausairpower.net/PVO-S/53T6-SH-08-Gazelle-ABM-TL-1... Or this: http://www.ausairpower.net/PVO-S/Gorgon-ABM-Transporter-Loader-1S.jpg http://www.ausairpower.net/PVO-S/Gorgon-ABM-Transporter-Load... Here's what a portable ICBM looks like: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Moscow_Parad_2008_Ballist.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Moscow_Pa... Or this: http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/images/rs24tel.jpg http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/images/rs24tel.jpg
- madaxe 14y agoYup, those would be the ones. Nice long convoy of them with APCs and tanks at the head and tail, cruising down the highway. Seeing this kind of stuff is par for the course out there though. Drove from Rostov na donu to Stalingrad and there were huge (and I mean HUGE) convoys of tanks cruising down to syria's neck of the woods. This isn't news to the world, it's just known stuff that isn't talked about as it doesn't mesh very well with realpolitik. Edit: think there was also a satan in the convoy we saw, two massive stages on separate carriers. Proper "oh holy shit what am I seeing pretend I'm not here" stuff.
- mietek 14y agoA satan? Can you explain?
- vitalique 14y agoSS-18 'Satan' is a NATO designation for Soviet/Russian ICBM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-18
- madaxe 14y agoYou haven't lived until you've sat on top of one (on its side!) waving a cowboy hat. Fond memories... Although I now also remember my lunch of various animal tubes on the same day. Damnitall.
- tobiasu 14y agoThat's not news :) The reason these things are extremely off-road capable is so they can move around in the woods and the enemy can't take them out in a first strike attack. The retaliation capability is what creates the (desired) balance between nuclear powers. Same with nuclear submarines. Hide and seek for "grown-ups"...
- madaxe 14y agoDon't forget "passenger trains". Neatly dressed up to look like the express service, but chock full o' nuclear goodness. The roof peels back, and you can launch straight from the rails.
- jcarreiro 14y agoAccording to the article, "Servicemembers from the tank brigade that found the crater have confirmed that background radiation levels at the site are normal", and "Background radiation levels in Chelyabinsk remain unchanged, the Emergency Ministry reported". I am no physicist. But assuming that we can take these reports at face value, doesn't that rule out the possibility that the meteorite was intercepted by a nuclear device?
- madaxe 14y agoNot really. A 10kt yield at altitude wouldn't leave much radioactivity above background at ground level. Also, this is the Russian military we're talking about. I don't think they'll fess up to detonating a nuke, no matter how small, in a populated area. We're talking about the same guys who absolutely definitely positively did not use nukes to build shipping canals. Oh, and I am a Physicist. MSc from an Ivy-League equivalent in the UK, although these days I'm a web gimp instead.
- pm90 14y agoWe're talking about the same guys who absolutely definitely positively did not use nukes to build shipping canals Ok, I'm genuinely not sure whether you're being sarcastic. So _did_ the Russians use nukes to build shipping canals?
- madaxe 14y agoThey experimented with it, publicly declared it a success, but said they weren't going to do it, and proceeded to use the tech on the far side of the country. Pechora-Kama I think was the original project. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but the locals I've met (Kazakhstan) insist that they did.
- jlgreco 14y agoDidn't the US experiment with it as well? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare It wouldn't surprise me if the Russians were looking at the same thing, but it should leave some fairly telling clues behind. At the very least you can see plowshare craters littering Nevada on google maps (in a nice grid pattern in some areas, just search for "Sedan crater" and zoom out a little), I would expect similar to be somewhere in Russia if they were doing the same. Edit: This is the Russian version of plowshare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nati... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagan_(nuclear_test) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagan_(nuclear_test)
- JPKab 14y agoCan someone please enlighten me, because I was under the impression that there is no ABM system on the planet capable of intercepting, let alone destroying, a large rock moving at 10km/second. I'm not saying its impossible, but it just seems to me that there is a lot of misinformation as to what actually happened.
- lutorm 14y agoI'm with you here. The RIM-161 standard anti-ballistic missile used by the US is quoted by wikipedia as having a speed of 9600km/h or 2.7km/s. Speeds in low-Earth orbit are about 7-8 km/s, objects entering from a solar orbit likely several times that. There is absolutely no way you would have significant success probability of intercepting it with a missile unless you knew the incoming orbit very precisely. Just look at that dashcam footage: from entering the atmosphere to breakup was just a couple of seconds. On a very tangential orbit, no less.
- madaxe 14y agoGazelle does at least 5.5km/s.
- lutorm 14y agoBut how long does it take to get to that speed?
- madaxe 14y agoBy the time its left the silo. Russians are dead keen on their one-shot silos packed to the gills with various devices (pneumatic, hydraulic, explosive) to bring a missile up to ludicrous speed very, very quickly. Spent a very enlightening afternoon down an old bunker near pervomaisk. Found some stats in the tourist brochure from there. 9.4m high,1.1m dia, 4km/s in 4s, which gives an acceleration if about 102g. 80-100km range. Max speed 7km/s. "directional blast" also, which is interesting.
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- rwallace 14y agoI predict the ABM interception will turn out not to have occurred. We don't have a surveillance system capable of detecting something that size until it hits atmosphere, which means there would only be seconds of warning. That's not enough time to make the decision to fire an ABM.
- DanBC 14y ago> I predict the ABM interception will turn out not to have occurred. I agree. > We don't have a surveillance system capable of detecting something that size until it hits atmosphere, NASA tracks at least 21,000 items above 10 cm diameter. Objects above 3 mm can be tracked by ground based radar. (http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html#3 http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html#3) (http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/ http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/)
- ovi256 14y agoAlmost all the items NASA tracks have orbits inside the solar system. This thing came out of nowhere (if it's orbiting around the Sun, it's so excentric that the orbit period is very long so it's like we saw it for the first time - if it's not orbiting the Sun, we did see it for the first time).
- davidcuddeback 14y agoThe NASA program in question is actually limited to objects in orbit around the Earth. (Orbital Debris is typically out-of-commission satellites and parts of rockets that are still in orbit around the Earth.) We can track objects as small as 10cm that are in orbit around Earth. (schiffern explains in more detail how.) To track potentially hazardous astroids (PHAs), scientists use different methods and are not capable of detecting rocks as small as this one. That doesn't mean that it came from outside the solar system or that it has an eccentric orbit. It just means that it was too small to detect with current methods.
- _kst_ 14y agoWhat's your basis for asserting that it has (well, had) a particularly eccentric orbit?
- okor 14y agoI don't see any explosions here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iCawTYPtehk http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i...
- dennisgorelik 14y agoYou see the explosion. It's just about 150 km north from explosion (over Chelyabinsk, Russia). That video was made from Kamensk-Uralsky, Russia. https://maps.google.com/maps?q=from:+Russia,+Sverdlovsk+Oblast,+Kamensk-Uralsky+to:chelyabinsk,+russia&saddr=Russia,+Sverdlovsk+Oblast,+Kamensk-Uralsky&daddr=chelyabinsk,+russia&hl=en&ll=55.776573,61.45752&spn=2.409996,7.498169&sll=55.936895,63.231812&sspn=2.400075,7.498169&geocode=FXuJXAMdmiOxAykjVai0ldnGQzE0odoCr4kEaw%3BFYmNSQMdOgWpAymNOkoQy5LFQzG_ERdtKkoi7w&t=h&z=8 https://maps.google.com/maps?q=from:+Russia,+Sverdlovsk+Obla... Edit: Fixed city name, added map.
- ceejayoz 14y agoThat's extraordinarily unlikely. edit: http://www.nature.com/news/russian-meteor-largest-in-a-century-1.12438 http://www.nature.com/news/russian-meteor-largest-in-a-centu... "Explosion rivalled nuclear blast, but rock was still too small for advance-warning networks to spot."