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  • The Russian Academy of Sciences estimates that the meteor weighed about 10 tonnes and entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of at least 54,000 km/h (33,000mph).

    Fuck thats a lot of energy

    54,000 km/h / 60x60 s/h = 15 km/s

    KE = 1/2 m v^2 = 1,125,000,000,000 J, equivalent to 269 Tonnes of TNT in the usual measure of explosions. i.e. only a little more than a quarter kiloton, about equal the smallest nuke in the US arsenal.

    Interestingly, would have got upto 11.2 km/s of its velocity from falling into the Earth's gravitational field, so would have been wandering through space at less than 4 km/s - too slow for it to have come from very far out in the solar system.

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