Asteroid to zoom by Earth following meteor over Russia

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Right now people are still talking about how frightening it was -- -- ten ton -- year explodes in the skies over central Russia.

You can see the fireball as it streaks across the sky at supersonic speeds the shock -- Smashed windows flying glass and debris injured almost a thousand people there.

That happening just hours before a cosmic close encounter with an asteroid half the size of a football field.

This thing is going to pass by earth later today it will be closer than some of our own orbiting satellites.

Derrick Pitts is the chief astronomer at the Franklin institute planetarium in Philadelphia and joins us now.

Derek are these two things related kind of ironic that you have that one meteor blasting over Russia.

Just as his other one make such a close pass.

It really is coincidental that this -- happen this way -- the tour not related to each other.

Thank goodness the -- were not related to each other and it is -- sort of insisting that the two would happen at the same time so.

Although meteors can stream into the Earth's atmosphere at any time this one just happened to be -- Rather large one this big one that's that's going to make the flyby later today on the that one they may have known about they've they've charted -- they've seen it coming.

The one that blew up over Russia was actually probably too small for anybody to pick up on any kind of radar anything -- Yeah that's really the way we can look at the -- is that asteroids that we see coming into the the -- story we see coming into the Earth's atmosphere today.

Has been tracked for more than a year or so we would know and understand its trajectory how close -- would come to the -- things like that.

But meteors and come streaking through the Earth's atmosphere can come streaking through the Earth's atmosphere we're not really tracking them in the same way that we're tracking asteroids.

And since they do happen to come on a regular basis again here's one that just happens to be -- On the large side that was so what happened exactly why did it blow up its -- rock.

It comes streaking through the atmosphere -- thousands of miles an hour the friction when it encounters Earth's atmosphere makes it hot.

What causes the explosion.

As this comes into the Earth's atmosphere traveling at over 30000 miles per hour the first thing that's happening is -- compressing a lot of air ahead of it so it heats the air ahead of it -- makes the sky glow around it so it looks like it's on fire.

Then there's the shock of all of that that mean that mass pressing into the Earth's atmosphere.

That will help to break it up into pieces and these pieces then fall to the surface of the earth.

The shock wave comes from the fact that it's traveling greater than the speed of sound so it's breaking the sound barrier and because it's down so low just thirty miles or so above the surface of the earth.

It creates this shock -- -- then travels out ahead of it that can break all the windows that we saw on this particular instance.

But pieces of -- have also fallen and hit buildings in this in the region around it so there'll be that kind of damage as well.

Wow well scary stuff.

Derrick Pitts.

Thanks for explaining it to us.

My pleasure John thank you.

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Asteroid to zoom by Earth following meteor over Russia

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