A man in Moscow looks at a computer screen displaying a picture reportedly taken in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, showing the trail of a falling object above a residential area of the city.
From the Russian Academy of Sciences (article in RU):
The object was "a few meters" across, but weighed around 10 tons and had a total energy of "a few kilotons." It entered the atmosphere at a speed of 15-20 km/second and broke up an altitude of 30-50 kilometers.
The meteorite is on Twitter. We can't verify whether or not this is the actual meteorite or a parody account.
This says, "Meteors only fall once. I've already fallen. I cannot fall again."
@dzhalik10 метеориты падают один раз. Я уже упал. Еще раз не могу.
Vladimir Putin riding the smoke trail is just one of several memes that have cropped up after the meteorite strike. News.ru has more.
The Russian Academy of Sciences is calling the strike a "bolide explosion," which is basically a classification of meteors by brightness -- bolides being very bright (link in Russian). Here is the Wikipedia page for meteroids and bolides.
Tragedy is not without humor. This item on the Kommersant Facebook page says:
"The in habitants of the meteorite wached in horror the approach of the oncoming Chelyabinsk"
Worth revisiting the 1908 Tunguska meteorite strike that leveled nearly 1,000 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest land in Siberia. The Guardian has a great writeup with some archived newspaper clips in a piece published on February 8.
Don't believe everything you see on TV. Some news outlets are saying they have shots of the Chelyabinsk meteorite crater -- but they are actually showing the so-called "door to hell" in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert (pictured below):
Another video that caught the explosion:
Russian President Vladimir Putin on the event in Chelyabinsk:
"Everything must be done to assess the damage objectively. I spoke to the leadership of Chelyabinsk Oblast just half an hour ago. People are working. Thank God no large objects fell in populated areas, however there were still people who were injured. We need to think about how to help people -- not just to think about it but do it immediately."
"Chelyabinsk Oblast sustained the heaviest damage. As a result of the air wave and other damaging effects, more than 297 houses, 12 schools, several social-service facilities, and a number of industrial enterprises were damaged."
"It was recommended that a number of enterprises stop their work so that workers could go home to assess the damage and take measures to preserve the heat because a lot of windows had been broken. That was a priority task because the temperature was minus 5 Celsius during the day and a further drop in temperature was expected during the night."
