Who is Frederic Beigbeder? Frederic Beigbeder about the biggest tragedy of his life
On the morning of February 15, at 9:30 local time, an explosion was heard in the sky over Chelyabinsk, which was initially mistaken for an airplane explosion. A powerful flash was visible for many kilometers around. Great destruction from the shock wave occurred at the Chelyabinsk zinc plant, where the wall of the warehouse collapsed and some of the glass was broken.
(19 photos of a meteorite fall in Chelyabinsk + 6 videos)
The blast wave damaged 3,000 buildings over a vast area: glass was broken, some structures and balconies collapsed. There are no fatalities. One way or another, about 1,000 people in six cities near Chelyabinsk were injured by the explosion. 
People stayed in residential buildings without glass, and it was 15 degrees below zero outside, many received small cuts from fragments of the exploding object. Very soon it became known that the object was a meteorite that fell near the city of Satka, between Chelyabinsk and Ufa. 
Scientists expressed their opinion. Stating that there was a meteor shower over Chelyabinsk. Immediately before the explosion, space observation instruments recorded activity in the lower layers of the atmosphere. 
A source in the Ministry of Emergency Situations told Interfax about the recorded fall of an object, presumably a meteorite, which, when passing through the upper layers of the atmosphere, most likely broke up into several pieces. 
The flash in the sky over Chelyabinsk was observed by eyewitnesses in Yekaterinburg, which is located two hundred kilometers from Chelyabinsk, in the Kurgan and Tyumen regions, as well as in neighboring Kazakhstan. Most likely, the meteorite fell into a reservoir near the city of Chebarkul. On the shore of a lake located a kilometer away from the city, the site of the supposed fall was found: a crater with a diameter of about 6 meters. 
According to the latest data, the meteorite was small in size - only about 1 meter in diameter, and weighing several tons. Most likely, it consisted of iron. As a result of the destruction, a shock wave and radiation formed in the atmosphere, the fragments scattered into long distance. The explosion was captured on video and shown to the media. There are air routes in the skies over Chelyabinsk; no aircraft were damaged in the air. 
An official statement was made by the head of the Chelyabinsk administration in connection with an emergency incident - the fall of a meteorite and its fragments on Southern Urals. He stated that, despite the serious destruction at the zinc plant, there were no casualties, and there was no threat of environmental danger. In city schools, by decision of the administration, the second shift was canceled, and employees of city enterprises were advised not to come to their workplaces until the afternoon of Friday, February 15. 
Cellular communications are not working in the city after a meteorite explosion. NASA experts estimate the power of the meteorite explosion during its fall at three hundred kilotons of TNT, which is twenty times greater than the power of the bomb exploded over Hiroshima. This is the first time such an incident has happened in Russia. 
Chelyabinsk meteorite- a stone meteoroid that fell on February 15, 2013 in the area of Lake Chebarkul in the Chelyabinsk region. The meteorite fell at 9:20 local time 80 km west of Chelyabinsk. As a result of the meteorite fall, 1,491 people were injured.
According to experts, the mass of the meteorite was up to 10,000 tons, and its diameter was about 15-17 m. The flight of the meteorite body from the moment it entered the atmosphere lasted 32.5 seconds. During its flight in the atmosphere, the meteorite broke into many parts, and therefore fell to the ground in the form of a meteor shower. At an altitude of 15-25 meters, the meteorite broke up into several parts as a result of a series of explosions. The speed of the fireball's fall ranged from 20 to 70 km/s. When falling, the space object left a bright trail that was visible even in Kazakhstan and the Samara region.
When the meteorite broke into several parts, shock waves were formed. According to experts, total The energy released during the destruction of the cosmic body amounted to up to 500 kilotons of TNT equivalent.
Chronicle of the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite
At 9:15 local time, the movement of the cosmic body was seen by residents of the Kostanay and Aktobe regions of Kazakhstan. At 9:21 a.m. a meteorite trail was spotted in the Orenburg region. The meteorite's fall was witnessed by residents of the Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Kurgan, Samara and Chelyabinsk regions, as well as the Republic of Bashkortostan.
At 9:20 local time, a meteorite fell into Lake Chebarkul, located 1 km from the city of Chebarkul. The fall of parts of the meteorite was observed by fishermen who were fishing near the lake. According to eyewitnesses, about 7 fragments of a cosmic body flew over the lake, one of which fell into the lake, raising a column of water 3-4 meters high. On satellite map you can see Lake Chebarkul, where the meteorite fell.
As a result of the fall of the meteorite, a blast wave was formed, which in terms of released energy exceeded the energy atomic bombs, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Due to the flat trajectory of the body’s entry into the atmosphere, only part of the released energy reached settlements.
Consequences of the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite
Because the most of The energy dissipated, and the blast wave mostly broke out the glass in buildings in nearby settlements. The meteorite injured 1,491 people, but most injuries were due to cuts and bruises from broken glass. However, the Chelyabinsk meteorite has no equal in the world in terms of the number of victims.
The greatest damage from the disaster was suffered by 6 settlements in the Chelyabinsk region: the cities of Yemanzhelinsk, Chelyabinsk, Korkino, Kopeisk, Yuzhnouralsk and the village of Etkul. The shock wave damaged many buildings: the damage from it is estimated from 400 million to 1 billion rubles.
Chelyabinsk zinc plant, the roof of which collapsed from the blast wave of a meteorite
Research and study of the Chelyabinsk meteorite
On February 15, 2013, it was established that fragments of a meteorite fell in the Chebarkul and Zlatoust districts of the Chelyabinsk region. Scientists from UrFU collected fragments of the meteorite for further study.
Researchers later told the press that the meteorite was an ordinary chondrite, which consists of sulfites, iron, olivine and fusion crust.
5 years ago, February 15, 2013 at 9:20 (7:20 Moscow time) residents of Chelyabinsk, as well as Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Tyumen regions, parts of northern Kazakhstan, witnessed a rare astronomical phenomenon - the appearance of a bright superbolide (a very bright large meteor - a fragment of a space object) moving in westward. The movement of the fireball was accompanied by several flashes (perceived by eyewitnesses as explosions due to strong bangs heard after some time), the brightest of which lasted, according to various sources, from one to five seconds, while the heat from it was felt, stronger than from the Sun during the day.
Later, witnesses to the event said that it was painful for them to look at the car. About 25 people out of 1.1 thousand respondents reported that they received burns, 315 felt heat, and 415 felt heat from the fireball's radiation. One of local residents received such severe burns to his face that his skin began to peel off, as if from an extremely strong tan.
The meteorite (a space object that flew through the atmosphere and fell to the ground), later named "Chelyabinsk", turned out to be "sounding": witnesses heard electrophone sounds - the so-called strange crackling sounds that are sometimes heard during the flight of a fireball. Such sounds cannot come from the cosmic body itself; scientists believe that they are provoked by electromagnetic fields arising during its flight.
Numerous meteorite fragments fell over a large area - almost the entire Chelyabinsk, along with its suburbs, fell into the zone of their fall.
The shock wave in Chelyabinsk knocked out windows and doors, the impact fell on the ventilation systems of houses, and part of the wall of a building on the territory of a zinc plant collapsed. Serious damage got Ice Palace"Ural Lightning", buildings of the South Ural state university. The impact zone of the shock wave on the surface was about 130 kilometers long and 50 kilometers wide.
On the map of the village and city, where the glass was broken by the shock wave, a characteristic “butterfly” was formed, the wings of which were deployed perpendicular to the flight path of the car. Researchers of the Tunguska event found approximately the same “butterfly” on the forest fall map almost a hundred years ago. After Tunguska meteorite This is the first time in Russia that a fireball’s invasion of the atmosphere was accompanied by destruction.
There were no casualties in the emergency, but more than 1.6 thousand people were injured, mainly due to cuts from broken windows.
The economic damage from a meteorite fall in the Chelyabinsk region exceeded 1.2 billion rubles.
The fall of a meteorite was captured for the first time in history. The proof is a large number of eyewitnesses, videos, photographs and instrumental data collected by the expedition Russian Academy Sci. An unprecedentedly rapid and fairly complete scientific analysis of the event was carried out, including the effects that accompanied it.
According to NASA, on February 15 at 9:20.20 local time, a meteorite entered the Earth's atmosphere near the border between Russia and Kazakhstan. It moved from the direction of the Sun in a western direction. Due to its small angle with respect to the Sun (about 15 degrees), the meteorite was not detected by asteroid observation systems. In addition, modern telescopes are focused on searching for asteroids (inert cosmic rocky bodies) larger than 100 meters in diameter (according to modern ideas, starting from this size, cosmic bodies can cause catastrophic destruction on Earth), and according to scientists, the initial size of a meteorite is " Chelyabinsk" was less than 20 meters, and therefore the penetration of this space object into the atmosphere went unnoticed.
13 seconds later, the meteorite, which by this time had turned into a bright fireball, reached the peak of its luminosity at an altitude of 23.3 kilometers, practically ceasing to exist. On Earth, this event was observed as a powerful explosion, after which the bolide continued its movement, but significantly weakened its brightness and after a few seconds disappeared completely.
American seismologists recorded the moment the body exploded - a shock of magnitude 4.0 was observed approximately a kilometer southwest of the center of Chelyabinsk. Russian seismic stations recorded an earthquake accompanying the explosion with a magnitude of 3.2 in the area of Yemanzhelinsk, located 50 kilometers from Chelyabinsk. For comparison, the fall of the Tunguska meteorite caused an earthquake, the magnitude of which is estimated at 5.0.
The first estimates of the power of the explosion near Chelyabinsk, obtained from infrasound stations of the Comprehensive Prohibition Organization nuclear tests, gave a value of about 470 kilotons of TNT, later data from infrasound stations in Russia and Kazakhstan - 570 kilotons. At the same time, optical and infrared observation data from satellites showed that energy equivalent to 90 kilotons was “exposed” in the form of radiation alone, which corresponds to the total explosion energy of 590 kilotons (plus or minus 50).
The bolide began to glow at an altitude of 97.1 kilometers when it entered the atmosphere at a speed of 19.16 kilometers per second. It reached its highest brightness at an altitude of 29.7 kilometers - at this moment its brightness reached magnitude minus 27.3, despite the fact that magnitude The sun is minus 26.7, which means the fireball shone about 30 times brighter.
Scientists estimated the mass of the object before entering the atmosphere at 13 thousand tons, and its transverse size at 19.8 meters (according to other estimates from 16 to 19 meters).
Only 4-6 tons of meteorite substance reached the ground, which is 0.03-0.05% of the original mass, while 76% of the substance evaporated, and the rest turned into dust. The fireball explosion created a giant dust ring in the upper atmosphere that encircled the entire northern hemisphere of the Earth and remained in the stratosphere for at least three months after the event.
The largest piece of meteorite weighing 654 kilograms was lifted in the fall of 2013 from Lake Chebarkul (Chelyabinsk region) from a depth of 20 meters. During weighing, it split, a fragment weighing 540 kilograms was transferred to the Chelyabinsk State local history museum. Later, his weight began to decrease due to the evaporation of water that entered him while in the lake. In 2015, he weighed 503.3 kilograms. Another meteorite fragment became an exhibit National Museum natural history France.
Studies of fragments of a celestial body have shown that this is an ordinary chondrite of type LL5 - one of the types of stony meteorites. Its age is about 4.45 billion years. Approximately 290 million years ago, the Chelyabinsk meteorite survived major disaster- collision with another cosmic body. This is evidenced by dark veins in its thickness there are traces of melting of the substance under a powerful impact. However, scientists believe that this was a very “fast” process. The traces of cosmic particles - the tracks of iron nuclei - did not have time to melt, which means that the “accident” itself lasted no more than a few minutes. At the same time, it is possible that traces of melting could have appeared during the asteroid’s too close approach to the Sun, according to scientists from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy (IGM) SB RAS.
Scientists from the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences stated that the space object once broke off from a relatively large asteroid.
Chemical analysis showed that traces remained in the meteorite organic compounds containing sulfur and oxygen. After the fireball explosion, residents smelled sulfur or a burning smell for a whole day, which appeared an hour after the explosion.
Scientists have calculated that the Chelyabinsk cosmic body was in the main asteroid belt solar system, the region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, where the trajectories of many small bodies pass. The orbits of some of them, in particular, the Apollo and Aten group asteroids, are elongated and can cross the Earth’s orbit.
The Chelyabinsk meteorite turned out to be the largest known celestial body to fall to Earth since the Tunguska meteorite in 1908. Such an event occurs on average once every 100 years, and according to some data, more often, up to five times a century.
After the fall of a meteorite in the Chelyabinsk region, the “space threat” worries specialists more and more. Scientists have found that small asteroids about one meter in size enter the Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate there about once every two weeks. Humanity is not yet able to oppose anything to larger space objects. Scientists also emphasize that cosmic bodies coming from the daytime sky cannot be detected in a timely manner using any ground-based means.
For this reason, NASA, Roscosmos and other space agencies are actively working on developing systems for detecting asteroids even before approaching the Earth, and are thinking about creating “space defense” means.
The first product of this kind was the Scout system, developed by NASA and successfully tested in the fall of 2016. She discovered an asteroid with a diameter of five to 25 meters and determined the distance to which it would approach the Earth, five days before its approach to the planet. In 2018, NASA plans to launch into orbit a whole brood of NEA Scout microsatellites, which will help the ground-based “scout” fill the gaps in knowledge about asteroids like the one in Chelyabinsk. When such an object approaches the Earth, one of the probes will fly up to it, take detailed photographs of its surface, and also “feel” it to study the structure of its interior and chemical composition.
In Russia, in 2016, the RAS Space Council approved the parameters of a project to create a system for monitoring cosmic bodies. The research projects are called "System for the detection of daytime asteroids" (SODA) and "SODA-detection". The system will detect celestial bodies more than ten meters in diameter four hours before the expected time of entry into the atmosphere. The SODA project involves the construction of a spacecraft that will be sent to one of the Lagrange points - L1, located at a distance of one and a half million kilometers from Earth. It is planned to place a telescope there that will examine the space around the Earth.
At the beginning of 2018, scientists reported that Russia began to develop a system for tracking dangerous asteroids, Nebosvod, consisting of two constellations of satellites - in Earth and solar orbits. It is being developed by the Russian corporation Kometa.
In the meantime, no country is technically capable of destroying space objects in the atmosphere like the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
> Chelyabinsk meteorite
Learn the history of the fall Chelyabinsk meteorite: description and characteristics of the object with a photo, force of impact, where it fell, size, where it came from, composition, age.
Five years have passed since the people of South Urals witnessed a cosmic cataclysm - the fall Chelyabinsk meteorite, which became the first modern history an incident that caused significant harm to the local population.
The asteroid fell in 2013, on February 15. At first, it seemed to the South Urals that an “obscure object” had exploded; many saw strange lightning lighting up the sky. This is the conclusion reached by scientists who studied this incident for a year.
Data on the Chelyabinsk meteorite
A fairly ordinary comet fell in an area near Chelyabinsk. Falls of space objects of precisely this nature occur once every century. Although, according to other sources, they happen repeatedly, on average up to 5 times every 100 years. According to scientists, comets with a size of about 10 m fly into the atmosphere of our Earth approximately once a year, which is 2 times larger than the Chelyabinsk meteorite, but this often happens over regions with a small population or over the oceans. Moreover, comets burn up and collapse at great heights, without causing any damage.
Before the fall, the mass of the Chelyabinsk aerolite was from 7 to 13 thousand tons, and its parameters supposedly reached 19.8 m. After analyzing, scientists found out that only about 0.05% of the initial mass fell to the surface of the earth, that’s 4-6 tons. Currently, a little more than one ton has been collected from this amount, including one of the large fragments of aerolite weighing 654 kg, raised from the bottom of Chebarkul Lake.
A study of the Chelyabinsk maetorite based on geochemical parameters revealed that it belongs to the type of ordinary chondrites of class LL5. This is the most common subgroup of stony meteorites. All currently discovered meteorites, about 90%, are chondrites. They got their name due to the presence of chondrules in them - spherical fused formations with a diameter of 1 mm.
Indications from infrasound stations indicate that in the minute of strong braking of the Chelyabinsk aerolite, when approximately 90 km remained to the ground, a powerful explosion occurred with a force equal to the TNT equivalent of 470-570 kilotons, which is 20-30 times stronger atomic explosion in Hiroshima, however, in terms of explosive power it is inferior to the fall of the Tunguska meteorite (approximately from 10 to 50 megatons) by more than 10 times.
The fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite immediately created a sensation both in time and place. In modern history, this space object is the first meteorite to fall into such a densely populated area, resulting in significant damage. So, during the meteorite explosion, the windows of more than 7 thousand houses were broken, more than one and a half thousand people sought medical help, of which 112 were hospitalized.
In addition to significant damage, the meteorite also caused positive results. This event is the best documented event to date. In addition, one video camera recorded the phase of the fall of one of the large fragments of the asteroid into Lake Chebarkul.
Where did the Chelyabinsk meteorite come from?
For scientists this question It wasn't too difficult. It emerged from our solar system's main asteroid belt, a zone in the middle of the orbits of Jupiter and Mars where the paths of most small bodies lie. The orbits of some of them, for example, the asteroids of the Aten or Apollo group, are elongated and can pass through the orbit of the Earth.
Astronomers were able to quite accurately determine the flight trajectory of the Chelyabinsk resident, thanks to many photo and video recordings, as well as satellite photographs that captured the fall. Then astronomers continued the meteorite's path to reverse side, for the atmosphere, in order to build the complete orbit of this object.
Several groups of astronomers tried to determine the path of the Chelyabinsk meteorite before it hit the Earth. According to their calculations, it can be seen that the semimajor axis of the orbit of the fallen meteorite was approximately 1.76 AU. (astronomical unit), this is average radius earth's orbit; the point of the orbit closest to the Sun - perihelion, was at a distance of 0.74 AU, and the point most distant from the Sun - aphelion, or apohelion, was at 2.6 AU.
These figures allowed scientists to try to find the Chelyabinsk meteorite in astronomical catalogs of already identified small space objects. It is clear that most of the previously identified asteroids, after some time, “fall out of sight” again, and then some of the “lost” ones manage to be “discovered” a second time. Astronomers did not reject this option, that the fallen meteorite may be the “lost one.”
Relatives of the Chelyabinsk meteorite
Although complete similarities were not revealed during the search, astronomers still found a number of probable “relatives” of the asteroid from Chelyabinsk. Scientists from Spain Raul and Carlos de la Fluente Marcos, having calculated all the variations in the orbits of the “Chelyabinsk”, found its supposed forefather - asteroid 2011 EO40. In their opinion, the Chelyabinsk meteorite broke away from it for about 20-40 thousand years.
Another team (Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic) led by Jiri Borovička, having calculated the glide path of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, found that it is very similar to the orbit of asteroid 86039 (1999 NC43) with a size of 2.2 km. For example, the semimajor axis of the orbit of both objects is 1.72 and 1.75 AU, and the perihelion distance is 0.738 and 0.74.
The difficult life path of the Chelyabinsk meteorite
Based on fragments of the Chelyabinsk meteorite that fell to the surface of the earth, scientists “identified” it life story. It turns out that the Chelyabinsk meteorite is the same age as our solar system. When studying the proportions of uranium and lead isotopes, it was found that it is approximately 4.45 billion years old.
on his difficult biography indicate dark threads in the thickness of the meteorite. They arose when substances that got inside as a result of a strong impact melted. This shows that approximately 290 million years ago this asteroid survived a powerful collision with some kind of space object.
According to scientists from the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry named after. Vernadsky RAS, the collision took approximately several minutes. This is indicated by leaks of iron nuclei that did not have time to completely melt.
At the same time, scientists from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy SB RAS (Institute of Geology and Mineralogy) do not reject the fact that traces of melting may have appeared due to the excessive proximity of the cosmic body to the Sun.
