[meteorite-list] FWD: News on the Vitim bolide
- Forward Message meteorobs-digest Saturday, July 26 2003 Volume 04 : Number 1192 (meteorobs) News on the Vitim bolide (meteorobs) The Vitim bolide in English (meteorobs) On the Vitim bolide in English (meteorobs) A small addition -- Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 17:43:16 +0400 From: Andrei Ol'khovatov [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (meteorobs) News on the Vitim bolide Dear All, Here are some news regarding the September 24/25, 2002 Vitim bolide in Russia. It is in Russian from a press-conference which I attended: http://www.rian.ru/rian/intro.cfm?nws_id=411872 (some pictures from an expedition to the Vitim bolide can be seen here: http://www.neplaneta.ru/press_konf_aif.shtml ) I think that soon the news will appear in English. Those who wants to read them right now could read my impressions of the press-conference at my www-page: http://olkhov.narod.ru/news1999.htm Best wishes, Andrei Ol'khovatov Russia, Moscow -- Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 09:13:31 +0400 From: Andrei [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (meteorobs) The Vitim bolide in English Dear All, The news info on the Vitim bolide in English have appeared! The first one is from France-Press: MOSCOW, July 25 (AFP) - A giant meteorite that struck the Irkutsk region of Siberia last September had the force of a nuclear bomb of medium power and devastated a huge area of taiga, Russian scientists reported Friday. A 10-strong expedition of scientists and doctors was unable to identify and reach the place where the meteorite landed until mid-May. It was finally located in the very remote, wooded semi-mountainous region of Bodaibo, northeast of Irkutsk and Lake Baikal. Over an area of 100 square kilometres (40 square miles) trees were smashed in a pattern characteristic of very powerful blast effects, expedition leader Vadim Chernobrov told a news conference. He said that the meteorite had disintegrated before hitting the ground and had left about 20 craters, up to 20 metres (nearly 70 feet) in diameter, with an explosion equivalent to the power of an atomic bomb of medium size. A video made by the expedition and shown to reporters showed shattered and sometimes burnt tree stumps, charred by the high temperatures released by the explosion. Meteorites are large rocks which tumble through space and then get caught in the Earth's gravity, becoming red-hot with the heat of the atmosphere. Unlike meteors, which burn up completely as they fall and are occasionally visible in the night sky as shooting stars, meteorites are rocks which are so big they make it all the way to the ground. The brighest such phenomenon ever recorded during human history also happened over Siberia. In 1908 a meteorite hit the Tunguska region, devastating the forest over an area of some 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles). Many scientists also believe that in prehistoric times a massive meteorite that hit what is now Central America may have caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs. = And much more detailed article from RIA-NOVOSTI: = http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160msg_id=3345630startrow=1date=2003-07-25do_alert=0 VITIM METEORITE WAS PROBABLY A COMET Russian Information Agency Novosti July 25, 2003 MOSCOW - Russian scientists who have investigated the place where the so-called Vitim meteorite fell presume that what hit the taiga was a small comet. The object concerned was a large celestial body with a supposed weight of about 100 tons, which at the end of September of last year fell into the basin of the Vitim River in Eastern Siberia. Witnesses claim that they saw a glowing object hurtle through the air and break up into small pieces and then heard a powerful explosion. A fire started in the place of the fall, within a radius of 3 kilometres. Because these localities are hard to reach, the investigators did not arrive there until this summer. Members of the Russian expedition said they failed to discover metal remnants in the place of the fall. Besides, the character of damage and the radiation background at the explosion epicentre are substantially different from the aftereffects of the fall of a meteorite, believe the scientists. The meteorite version is also disproved by the fact that edges of meteorites are usually fused, and fragments of the celestial body have a dense metallic structure. The fragments found by the scientists resemble sandstone and crumble in hands, one of the expedition participants Vadim Chernobrov, head of the Kosmopoisk research association, told RIA Novosti. According to him, some data, however, fail to confirm the comet theory. The local water was found to contain tritium, a special kind of radioactive hydrogen, and that is rather strange for comets, thinks Chernobrov. Although near midnight on September 24, 2002, the flying object above Eastern Siberia was registered,
Re: [meteorite-list] FWD: News on the Vitim bolide
Just wondering that tritium...anybody asked, has the army any missiles missing...? It was some 20 years ago the russian missile was crashed on the ice of lake Inari in the finnish Lappland...fortunately not a nuclear one...;- couldn´t help myself... pekka Robert Verish wrote: - Forward Message meteorobs-digest Saturday, July 26 2003 Volume 04 : Number 1192 (meteorobs) News on the Vitim bolide (meteorobs) The Vitim bolide in English (meteorobs) On the Vitim bolide in English (meteorobs) A small addition -- Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 17:43:16 +0400 From: Andrei Ol'khovatov [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (meteorobs) News on the Vitim bolide Dear All, Here are some news regarding the September 24/25, 2002 Vitim bolide in Russia. It is in Russian from a press-conference which I attended: http://www.rian.ru/rian/intro.cfm?nws_id=411872 (some pictures from an expedition to the Vitim bolide can be seen here: http://www.neplaneta.ru/press_konf_aif.shtml ) I think that soon the news will appear in English. Those who wants to read them right now could read my impressions of the press-conference at my www-page: http://olkhov.narod.ru/news1999.htm Best wishes, Andrei Ol'khovatov Russia, Moscow -- Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 09:13:31 +0400 From: Andrei [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (meteorobs) The Vitim bolide in English Dear All, The news info on the Vitim bolide in English have appeared! The first one is from France-Press: MOSCOW, July 25 (AFP) - A giant meteorite that struck the Irkutsk region of Siberia last September had the force of a nuclear bomb of medium power and devastated a huge area of taiga, Russian scientists reported Friday. A 10-strong expedition of scientists and doctors was unable to identify and reach the place where the meteorite landed until mid-May. It was finally located in the very remote, wooded semi-mountainous region of Bodaibo, northeast of Irkutsk and Lake Baikal. Over an area of 100 square kilometres (40 square miles) trees were smashed in a pattern characteristic of very powerful blast effects, expedition leader Vadim Chernobrov told a news conference. He said that the meteorite had disintegrated before hitting the ground and had left about 20 craters, up to 20 metres (nearly 70 feet) in diameter, with an explosion equivalent to the power of an atomic bomb of medium size. A video made by the expedition and shown to reporters showed shattered and sometimes burnt tree stumps, charred by the high temperatures released by the explosion. Meteorites are large rocks which tumble through space and then get caught in the Earth's gravity, becoming red-hot with the heat of the atmosphere. Unlike meteors, which burn up completely as they fall and are occasionally visible in the night sky as shooting stars, meteorites are rocks which are so big they make it all the way to the ground. The brighest such phenomenon ever recorded during human history also happened over Siberia. In 1908 a meteorite hit the Tunguska region, devastating the forest over an area of some 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles). Many scientists also believe that in prehistoric times a massive meteorite that hit what is now Central America may have caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs. = And much more detailed article from RIA-NOVOSTI: = http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160msg_id=3345630startrow=1date=2003-07-25do_alert=0 VITIM METEORITE WAS PROBABLY A COMET Russian Information Agency Novosti July 25, 2003 MOSCOW - Russian scientists who have investigated the place where the so-called Vitim meteorite fell presume that what hit the taiga was a small comet. The object concerned was a large celestial body with a supposed weight of about 100 tons, which at the end of September of last year fell into the basin of the Vitim River in Eastern Siberia. Witnesses claim that they saw a glowing object hurtle through the air and break up into small pieces and then heard a powerful explosion. A fire started in the place of the fall, within a radius of 3 kilometres. Because these localities are hard to reach, the investigators did not arrive there until this summer. Members of the Russian expedition said they failed to discover metal remnants in the place of the fall. Besides, the character of damage and the radiation background at the explosion epicentre are substantially different from the aftereffects of the fall of a meteorite, believe the scientists. The meteorite version is also disproved by the fact that edges of meteorites are usually fused, and fragments of the celestial body have a dense metallic structure. The fragments found by the scientists resemble sandstone and crumble in hands, one of the expedition participants Vadim Chernobrov, head of the Kosmopoisk research association, told RIA Novosti. According to him, some data, however, fail to confirm the
