A still from a YouTube video shows an object falling from the sky over Russia earlier Friday.
(Credit:
YouTube)
A series of powerful explosions about 900 miles east of Moscow today might have been caused by a meteor shower, Russian emergency officials say.
Witnesses said one meteorite crashed into a wall near a zinc factory in the Chelyabinsk region, disrupting the city's Internet and mobile service. The blast reportedly set off a shockwave that broke nearby windows and set off
car alarms.
"Preliminary indications are that it was a meteorite rain," an emergency official told the state news agency RIA-Novosti, according to a Reuters account. "We have information about a blast at 10,000-meter (32,800-foot) altitude. It is being verified."
The trace of a falling object captured on video (see below)could be seen in the skies over Yekaterinburg, about 125 miles southeast of Chelyabinsk.
The suspected strike occurred on the same day that a 150 foot-wide asteroid is expected to complete a remarkably close, but safe, flyby. Coincidentally, the last time an asteroid this size smacked into the Earth was in 1908 in Tuguska, Siberia.
Meteorite suspected of causing explosions, damage in Russia
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Meteorite suspected of causing explosions, damage in Russia
