A bus-sized meteor exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains, sparking speculation about everything from a missile attack to the end of the world. The shock waves smashed windows and damaged buildings.

A meteor the size of a bus exploded in the atmosphere over the Russian Urals city of Chelyabinsk Friday, terrifying thousands with blinding light flashes and powerful sonic booms that shattered windows, damaged buildings, and injuries may be heading toward 1,000, mainly due to flying glass and debris.

more here:http://news.yahoo.com/meteorite-not-end-world-strikes-russias-siberia-144416162.html

Thanks to the proliferation of new technologies like CCTV and dashboard cameras in cars, the dazzling meteor shower that hit the far-western Siberian region may be the first event of its kind in history to be filmed from almost every angle.

Dozens of videos have cropped up on YouTube and other social media, and they offer an astounding glimpse of what happens when a huge hunk of rock, estimated at about 10 tons, plows into the atmosphere at a speed of 30,000 miles per hour. It disintegrated in a series of bright flashes while still several miles above the Earth's surface.

According to eyewitnesses quoted by the Ekho Moskvi radio station, the event began around 9 a.m. local time, when it was not yet full daylight. The station said that thousands of people rushed into the frigid streets, looking up at the fiery contrails in the sky, with many wondering if it was an air disaster, a missile attack, or the end of the world.

What a disaster!

kinda cool tho... sorry about all those people hurt, but it isn't a mundane disaster...

It would've been worse if it impacted.

must have been spectacular!
Too bad about the Debris that hit and injured people!

Would have been a real Killer if it had impacted the ground in one piece!

Must have been as awesome as it was horrifying.

They are lucky it did not hit a city directly. It would have been catastrophic. 500 time worse than Hiroshima. They are so lucky it blew up in the sky and then scattered into pieces.

Late Friday, NASA revised its estimates on the size and power of the devastating meteor explosion. The meteor's size is now thought to be slightly larger — about 55 feet (17 m) wide — with the power of the blast estimate of about 500 kilotons, 30 kilotons higher than before, NASA officials said in a statement. [See video of the intense meteor explosion]

The meteor was also substantially more massive than thought as well. Initial estimated pegged the space rock's mass at about 7,000 tons. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., now say the meteor weighed about 10,000 tons and was travelling 40,000 mph (64,373 km/h) when it exploded.

"These new estimates were generated using new data that had been collected by five additional infrasound stations located around the world - the first recording of the event being in Alaska, over 6,500 kilometers away from Chelyabinsk," JPL officials explained in the statement. The infrasound stations detect low-frequency sound waves that accompany exploding meteors, known as bolides

I am wondering if it did more damage than is being reported.

The footage was spectacular, and although I feel for the victims, this was an amazing event.

i'm thinking most of the people that was hurt was probably standing at the windows watching it when the shock wave hit...

There was a special on the science channel about the event but I missed it. I am sure it will show again.


Some Science Channel info.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/science-channel-announces-russian-meteor-421940