Channel 1 of Russian TV showed on February 22, 2013 a documentary film "Chelyabinsk Meteorite: Seven Days Later", describing in detail a shocking state of a great number of citizens of this city after a bright flash in the blue morning sky, which had taken place in the morning of February 15. Then followed an explosion, accompanied by howling of car sirens, clinking of broken glass, switching off of mobile phones and rapidly forming traffic-jams on the roads. The film contains a lot of emotional assessments, including the opinion of director of the Ural Mechanical Engineering Plant, the shops of which looked like after an air raid: "We have never experienced anything like that in peace time. People are gradually coming to their senses, but the feeling that we are not protected as we have thought before still remains." According to the report of the Ministry of Emergencies, as a result of the meteorite explosion over the biggest industrial center of Southern Ural there suffered 1,240 people, 52 were hospitalized, 4,715 buildings were damaged, 190,000 m2 of glass was broken, material damage exceeded 1 bln rubles. In elimination of aftereffects were involved 4,660 men of the staff and 1,047 technical devices. But actually Chelyabinsk had the good luck--should the body flight direction turn to be 30 km to the north of the place and the angle of the entry to the atmosphere a bit steeper, the consequences for the city with a million population could have been extremely dramatic. The size of the falling body is estimated as 18-20 m, and the mass--approximately 10 thous. tons. According to usual human standards this is too much, but for the Solar system--only one of those cosmic grains of sand, several millions of which are revolving around our star in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter orbits. When the next such "grain" will emerge on the way of the Earth and where will it fall--unfortunately nobody can yet say. The fli ... Читать далее