Massive space rocks to explode over Earth?

The Chelyabinsk meteor which exploded over Russia earlier in 2013, injuring more than 1000 people, was not a one-off, there are 20 more lurking on a similar path, Spanish astronomers have warned.
Scientists discovered that the Chelyabinsk bolide, an 18-metre-wide, 11,000-tonne space rock that burst in a 460-kilotonne explosion above Russia, used to be a part of a larger space body. Between 20,000 to 40,000 years ago, a massive body orbiting the Sun broke up, most likely as a result of the temperature extremes and planetary gravitation it experienced while looping out past Mars and Venus, researchers said. The asteroid pieces formed an “asteroid family”, a group of asteroids that share same origin, composition and orbit, “RTnews” rep-orted. Astronomers have identified the parent of this potentially hazardous ast-eroid family as 2011 EO40. Those rocks are still flying somewhere in space, and just like the Chelyabinsk meteorite, their orbits could intersect with that of Earth. Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and colleagues from the Complutense University in Madrid have found reliable statistical evidence for the existence of the Chelyabinsk cluster, or asteroid family. Computer simulations of billions of possible asteroid orbits were used to find the ones most fitting into the Chelyabinsk impactor pre-collision orbit. They then searched the Nasa database of known asteroids to find out if any of them follow those orbits. They spotted the Chelyabinsk bolide family of about 20 asteroids, which range in size from 5 to 200 metres across.
It appears to include multiple small asteroids and two relatively large members: 2007 BD7 and 2011 EO40.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/249989" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-191f72d60577a0a79094ee0b65f5d385" value="form-191f72d60577a0a79094ee0b65f5d385" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="84810264" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.