Meteor Strike in Siberia Rains Down Debris and Injures 1,000

A 10-ton meteor broke apart 20 to 30 miles above the ground in western Siberia, raining chunks of debris over a large area, causing a powerful boom that damaged buildings across a vast territory, and injuring more than 1,000 people, mostly from shattering glass. The Russian Academy of Sciences said the meteor, known as a bolide, streaked through the earth’s atmosphere near the Ural mountain city of Chelyabinsk, 950 miles east of Moscow, around 9 a.m. local time Friday. It lit up the sky with a fireball that could be seen for hundreds of miles and that was captured on video by scores of observers. Pieces of the disintegrating meteor fell into a lake about 50 miles west of Chelyabinsk, and scientists and local officials said the damage and injuries could have been far worse had chunks of the meteor fallen on Chelyabinsk itself. As it was, the meteor strike shattered windows, TV sets, and dishes across a wide area, which caused most of the injuries. Most meteors that strike Earth disintegrate in the atmosphere, but this meteor was made of exceptionally hard material and did not fully burn up as it approached Siberia, scientists said.