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A huge fireball from space exploded above a Russian city, injuring more than a thousand

people—and no one saw it coming. Could it happen again?

By Justin O’Neill | Art by Gary Hanna

As the sun rises on February 15, 2013, the people of Chelyabinsk, Russia, start their mornings as usual, eating breakfast, driving to work, and heading to school. But the 1.1 million residents of this busy city are in for a very unusual day. This morning, a space rock 55 feet across—about as wide

as your school gym—is headed directly for Chelyabinsk. And nobody has any idea.

This rock has been circling close to Earth for thousands of years. Finally, this morning, it enters our atmosphere—the layer of gases that surrounds our planet.

Zooming toward Earth’s surface, the rock gets hotter and hotter. The heat is so intense that the rock starts to crumble as it travels 40,000 miles an hour—more than twice as fast as most rockets at liftoff. Now it’s about 15 miles above the ground, and it won’t be long until . . . it explodes!

THINK AND READText Evidence As you read, look for evidence (examples and details) that the author includes to support his description of events.

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Others pull their cars over, alarmed.What was that? A missile? A plane

crash? Aliens?!Two uneasy minutes pass. And

then—BOOM! SMASH!Thunderous bangs echo as

invisible shock waves shake Chelyabinsk. Walls collapse. People are knocked to the ground. Windows shatter, flinging razor-sharp shards of glass into homes, schools, and offices throughout the city. In a single

instant, about 1,500 people are injured.They are lucky. It could have been worse.

Rocks From the SkyEver look up at the night sky and see a

shooting star? Beautiful, yes? Don’t let the

The residents of Chelyabinsk gawk, puzzled, as a brilliant fireball streaks across the blue-pink morning sky and disappears in a blinding flash of light brighter than the sun. An eerie trail of smoke is left behind. Some people run outside or go to the windows for a better look.

Above and top left: The Chelyabinsk fireball was captured by many people using cell phones and cameras. Their images have greatly aided scientists. Bottom left: A meteorite crashed into a frozen lake, leaving a large hole.

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name confuse you, though—a shooting star is not really a star; it’s a meteor, the stream of light produced when a rock burns up in Earth’s atmosphere. Our solar system includes millions of rocks, such as asteroids (large space rocks), comets (part rock and part ice), and meteoroids (smaller space rocks). Especially large and bright meteors, like the one in Chelyabinsk, are called fireballs. Any pieces that land on Earth are called meteorites.

Mentions of sacred rocks from the sky appear in writings from ancient civilizations. The Egyptians called meteorites “metal from the sky” and turned them into special jewelry and short, sharp knives called daggers. The Greeks and Romans saw fallen space rocks as messages from the gods. The ancient Chinese carefully recorded meteor showers.

It wasn’t until 1794, though, that German physicist Ernst Chladni proposed that meteorites

come from outer space. But no one took

him seriously.

The common belief at the time was that rocks that fell from the sky came from Earth, having been first swept up by strong winds. Then, in April 1803, thousands of meteorites fell on the French town of L’Aigle. A physicist named Jean-Baptiste Biot went to investigate. Biot’s research finally convinced scientists that rocks can—and do—fall from space.

Now we know that space rocks are leftovers from when the planets of our solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Like the planets, the rocks move around the sun in circles called orbits. Generally, they stay in the asteroid belt, an area between Mars and Jupiter. But sometimes they knock into each other, bouncing around like bumper cars, and stray close to us. Each day, Earth is bombarded by some 100 tons of space debris, most of which burns up in the atmosphere without causing any harm.

But if an asteroid larger than a mile across were to hit Earth, it would be a catastrophe.

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid likely led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. That asteroid was six miles across. It crashed off the coast of what is now Mexico. Scientists believe dust clouds from the explosion blocked out the

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A researcher holds up a meteorite from

Chelyabinsk.

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sun—perhaps for months—causing plants and animals to die.

Could that happen again?

Another Close CallThe last time a meteoroid caused as much

damage as the one in Chelyabinsk did was more than 100 years ago—by chance, also in Russia.

On the morning of June 30, 1908, a farmer named S.B. Semenov was sitting on the porch of a trading post in Siberia, a vast area in eastern Russia. Suddenly, the sky lit up and a shock wave knocked him to the ground. He felt fierce heat, writing later, “It almost burned the shirt off me.”

Semenov was more than 40 miles away from the center of what has become known as the Tunguska event. Tunguska is a faraway region of the Siberian wilderness. With the force of nearly 200 atomic bombs, the explosion felled 80 million trees across an area more than twice the size of New York City.

But because Tunguska is so remote, it took decades for scientists to piece together what happened. The mystery inspired bizarre theories—a UFO explosion, a science experiment gone wrong, a black hole passing through the planet.

In fact, what happened in Tunguska was just like what happened in Chelyabinsk, except the Tunguska meteor was much larger and much closer to the ground. These events are extremely

rare; few of today’s scientists ever imagined they would live to see anything like it. Very large asteroid events, like the one that probably doomed the dinosaurs, are even more rare. They happen only once every 100 million years or so.

Searching for RocksWhat happened in Chelyabinsk is a

reminder of something that’s easy to forget: We live on a planet that is drifting through space, and we’re not alone. Drifting along with us are objects that may someday pose a threat. But scientists around the world are working feverishly to ensure that such an event never happens again.

And fortunately, no one in Chelyabinsk was killed. Most of the injuries were minor. Many people in the area have a new hobby: hunting for meteorites. Even small fragments of the fireball can be worth thousands of dollars.

If you were to see a meteorite, though, you probably wouldn’t think it was anything special. Most look an awful lot like boring old black rocks.

You’d probably walk right by it. n

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This photograph of a flattened forest shows the destruction caused by the Tunguska event.

Fortunately, no one lived in Tunguska. If the explosion had occurred above Paris or London,

for example, the city would likely no longer exist.

Pretend you live in Chelyabinsk when the space rock hits. In a letter to your teacher, explain what that day was like for you. Include at least five details from the story. Send it to “Space Rock Contest” by May 15, 2020. Five winners will each receive Meteors by Melissa Stewart. See details on page 2.

THINK AND WRITE

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