Meteorite impact in Russia Fact and Fiction

Facts

METEORS are pieces of space rock, usually from larger comets or asteroids, which enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Many are burned up by the heat of the atmosphere, but those that survive and strike the Earth are called meteorites.

• The blast occurred around 9:20 a.m. local time (12:20 a.m. EST) over Chelyabinsk, which is 950 miles east of Moscow.
• The meteor that entered the earth in Russia was about 55 feet in diameter, weighed around 10,000 tons and was made from a stony material, making it the largest such object to hit the Earth in more than a century.here
•  Explosion unleashed nearly 500 kilotons of energy, more than 30 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

Gold rush
The meteor that crashed in central Russia on Friday 15 of February  has sparked a modern-day gold rush as treasure hunters flock to the area for fragments worth more than £10,000.here
Large pieces of it have yet to be found. However, a team from Ural Federal University, which is based in Yekaterinburg, collected 53 fragments, the largest of which was 7 millimeters.

• It had a hyper-sonic speed of at least 33,000 mph  = 14 752.32 m / s and shattered into pieces about 18-32 miles above the ground.
• Most of the injuries and damage seem to have been caused by shock waves–sonic booms–from the meteor streaking through and breaking up in the atmosphere. Bits of it hit the ground, but they did not cause significant destruction, based on early reports.

It is the largest reported meteor since the one that hit Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908.

The site which hit by a meteorite in 1908 the picture taken in 1953

All of the available footage raises the question, why do so many Russians have dashboard cameras?
Answer: to prove who was at fault in car accidents.Russia has one of the highest car-accident rates in the world.Hit-and-run crashes are incredibly common.Pedestrians will throw themselves on car hoods at crosswalks and then lie on the asphalt, pretending to be injured.

Fiction
The meteor and an asteroid which came very close to earth, happening within one day makes us think they could be connected. That instinct comes from doing the math -- if it is improbable, then we think it cannot be a coincidence.

Bruce Willis does not help
Scientists hope never to find out, but they’re still trying to prepare for such an event. Mr Von Weyhe, the European space agency spokesman, says experts from Europe, the United States and Russia are already discussing how to spot potential threats sooner and avert them.
“It’s a global challenge and we need to find a solution together,” he said. “But one thing’s for sure, the Bruce Willis Armageddon method won’t work.”here

Conspiracy theory
A meteor that rained down on central Russia last week, injuring up to 1,200 people, was in fact a US weapons test a prominent Russian politician has claimed.
In language echoing that of the Cold War, nationalist Russian lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said: "Those were not meteorites, it was Americans testing their new weapons.here