Spectacular meteor strike captured in Russian dash cam footage

Michael Harley — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:29:00 EST

Chicken Little would have lost his cookies, yet the Russian driver in this video appears to have kept his wits about him despite the unannounced arrival of a massive fireball falling from the early morning sky - a spectacular event caught by an automotive dash cam - that injured nearly 1,000 people in Siberia.

While scientists estimate that tens of thousands of meteoroids fall from the sky each year, most are just tiny particles that burn up unseen. Only about five thousand are large enough to be really visible (at this point called a "fireball") and then break up and explode to earn the name "bolide." The bolide in the video left an impressive smoke trail of particulate during its ablation, but it also sent nearly a thousand Russians to the hospital for injuries suffered when its sonic blast blew out windows.

In case you are wondering, meteoroids enter the atmosphere at speeds between 25,000 and 160,000 mph. However, like a bullet hitting water, the earth's thick air quickly slows them (rapid compression of the air in front of the rock creates the familiar fiery glow) to a more palatable 200 to 400 mph before they impact the surface. The good news, especially for those who are worried about such events, is that most burn up and never make it all the way down. Check out the video below.

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Spectacular meteor strike captured in Russian dash cam footage originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Strangest trade-in ever? Man swaps meteorite for motorcycle

Jeremy Korzeniewski — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:29:00 EST

Filed under: Etc., Marketing/Advertising, Videos, Motorcycle

Landers Harley-Davidson has a motto: We'll trade for just about anything.

Really? Anything? One Arkansas man decided to test that motto himself when he called the dealership to see if they'd trade him a motorcycle for a meteorite. Wait... a what?

Jim Griffey was out minding his own business, planting trees in his backyard, when his shovel hit something solid. Out came an unidentified rock and in went the tree. That rock, though, was unlike anything else Griffey had ever seen, and had some rather strange magnetic properties.

Sensing something was awry, Griffey took his find to a local expert, who concluded that this unassuming chunk was actually a meteorite that had fell from the sky and embedded itself years ago into Griffey's backyard.

Seems that our man had more use for a Harley-Davidson than he did for a rock from outer space, and, luckily for him, Landers Harley-Davidson agreed to make the trade as long as Griffey could get documentation that his trade-in really was a meteorite.

Our take? Depending on the retail price of the motorcycle in question, we're thinking Landers has made a rather shrewd move. After all, regardless of the value of the actual meteorite, they can just take the price of the bike out of their annual marketing budget... it's darn near impossible to buy this kind of publicity. Click past the break to watch a video from Griffey's local CBS affiliate.

Continue reading Strangest trade-in ever? Man swaps meteorite for motorcycle

Strangest trade-in ever? Man swaps meteorite for motorcycle originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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