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Stunning Images of Meteors Who Crash Landed on Earth [PICS]

time.com — Meteors striking the surface of the earth leave behind an otherworldly mark. The most notorious of them — an enigmatic explosion that took place above Siberia on June 30, 1908 — is the inspiration for a gallery of striking photographs.

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MakiMaki 99 days ago, made popular 97 days ago

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bournedead, on 06/30/2008, -2/+92great story but are meteor people? "who"?
- Stroggoth, on 07/02/2008, -2/+3Because meteors have personality! j/k
  
  I agree though, "who" is the wrong word. "That" is a more appropriate qualification clause initiator.
  - dafragsta, on 07/02/2008, -0/+5or you could go Cletus and say:
    
    "Stunning Images of Meteors What Crash Landed on Earth "
  - Scynet, on 07/02/2008, -0/+4Well gee, how about WHICH? Duh...
- sherifftruman, on 07/02/2008, -1/+3Hey my mother was a meteor!
- KnutTheBear, on 07/02/2008, -1/+1Sorry, whom*
- Epistaxis, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2I guess it makes up for the all the people "that" wrongly use "that" as a pronoun for people.
- chesscat, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2LOL my thought, too.
- Verfel, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1When I die, I want to be remembered by the size of my impact crator too...
samoan27, on 06/30/2008, -3/+15Energy=G*m*M/r
1 kg meteorite = 15 kg TNT (assuming virtually no kinetic energy while in space)
- sc0rpi0n, on 07/01/2008, -1/+18You can't use gravitational potential energy to get collision energy.
  
  The deadly energy of a meteorite or an asteroid is the kinetic energy itself. Kinetic Energy = m * v² / 2. Celestial objects are all moving, more or less. So that will need at least two important variables: the mass of the meteorite and its speed. So 1 kg meteorite hitting Earth at 10,411 km/h upon impact will yield the energy equivalent to 15 kg of TNT. This of course assumes the it's an elastic collision. If that same 1kg meteorite is moving faster, the energy will be bigger too.
  - intekra, on 07/02/2008, -3/+2Head asplode!!1~one
  - AlanLivingston, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1I'm pretty sure gravitational PE will contribute to the speed at impact. As will atmospheric drag, which you failed to take into account. There's probably a whole bunch of other contributions that I'm neglecting, as well.
  - sc0rpi0n, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1@AlanLivingston,
    
    Yes, there are other factors in play, but kinetic energy is the closest we can get. Note that the speed (v) used is the speed of the meteorite relative to the Earth, at point blank when meteorite is about to hit the ground, so atmospheric and gravitational effects are already taken into account.
sc0rpi0n, on 07/01/2008, -4/+17Who? Meteors are alive! They are alive!
Beson669, on 07/01/2008, -8/+38"Who"?? What an idiot! "Meteors" is plural; it should read "Stunning Images of Meteors WHOM Crash-Landed on Earth"

What a moron!
- utlaw, on 07/02/2008, -2/+9I wonder how many people won't get your sarcasm?
- wjackson, on 07/02/2008, -2/+7Moran*
- brentnclemson, on 07/02/2008, -5/+2Funny....but it would actually be "who" if meteors were people. Doesn't matter if it's plural.
- legoalert33, on 07/02/2008, -13/+1I buried you because I hate English Nazis. Get off Digg and go back to teaching your 4th grade class.
  - Duositex, on 07/02/2008, -1/+6I buried you because I hate people that regularly trash the language and reinforce the world the opinion that people who speak English are bumbling idiots.
  - Stroggoth, on 07/02/2008, -1/+3Someone has to spread The Truth, otherwise Hooked on Phonics combined with IRCx chat language will pollute the spoken word. Poor grammar is for the lazy and unlearned.
  - ensiid, on 07/02/2008, -1/+6It's called S-A-R-C-A-S-M, you even got a free tip from the first reply.
  - legoalert33, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2Obvious troll is obvious.
    lulz
- brentnclemson, on 07/02/2008, -4/+1Give me a break, half of the comments on this thread are about the bad grammar in the title. And I was correcting someone who thought they were correcting the title...
- AlanLivingston, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3Shouldn't it be, "What a maroon!"
iamhumble, on 07/02/2008, -1/+3These are some amazing pics.
ELLIS1128, on 07/02/2008, -3/+8Meteors THAT...

IFTFY
mmigliari, on 07/02/2008, -4/+25-1 for bad english.
SMITHN4, on 07/02/2008, -3/+4We all know this was Tesla and not an exploding comet or meteor, and technically if a meteor collides with a body it becomes a meteorite
- ninepointfive, on 07/02/2008, -1/+2ohh reeeeaaahhhly? Tesla you say? probably not
  - floorman56, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1It's 7:17 AM on the morning of June 30, 1908, the exact moment when Nikoli Tesla is testing his "Death Ray" by aiming his beam towards the Arctic Cirle where he hopes Admiral Peary will see a visual display in the sky.
    In the small Siberian village, herders of Raindeer are awoken by a huge ball of light, followed by an enormous explosion. Seismic vibrations were recorded by sensitive instruments as much as 1000 km (600 mi) away. At 500 km (300 mi), observers reported "deafening bangs" and a fiery cloud on the horizon. About 170 km (110 mi) from the explosion, the object was seen in the cloudless, daytime sky as a brilliant, sunlike fireball; thunderous noises were heard. At distances around 60 km, people were thrown to the ground or even knocked unconscious; windows were broken and crockery knocked off shelves. Probably the closest observers were some reindeer herders asleep in their tents in several camps about 30 km (20 mi) from the site. They were blown into the air and knocked unconscious; one man was blown into a tree and later died. "Everything around was shrouded in smoke and fog from the burning fallen trees."
  - yaddayaddayoda, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Cite?
- BuckCynnie, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3Funny how people always seem confused when I refer to them as humanite.
SidiousX3, on 07/02/2008, -6/+0that was boring
phanfromcheese, on 07/02/2008, -1/+1I want to see the crater that is MakiMaki's mom's balloon knot.
Duositex, on 07/02/2008, -0/+11I'm totally freaked out that the Willamette meteorite had child-like aliens lodged in it, and apparently nobody seems to freakin notice.
HBNDonut, on 07/02/2008, -8/+2Wow. These are stunning. I expect to get dugg down for my ignorance but I didn't even know there were actual impact craters on our planets surface.
moman, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2Or in other words, how the human race is screwed unless we get off this planet.
- buba1243, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Nah we just need to create the orbital defense satellites, cause you know those will never be miss used.
- dafragsta, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Man, have you never played Asteroids? We just need to put someone in space with the Jaws soundtrack and a gun that splits them in two.
compl33t, on 07/02/2008, -1/+4Cool, but what about the Hoba Meteorite?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoba_meteorite
Iwantawii, on 07/02/2008, -0/+8Make no mistake, we are a tiny grain of sand floating around in a giant cosmic sandbox
utahnkid, on 07/02/2008, -5/+2The impacts happen once every million years? Riiight.... So they have evidence to back that up for the last 5 BILLION years? Or some "expert" pulled that straight from his ass..
- Jhiaxuz, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3While it may be a rough estimation, it's probably impossible to find any signs of most collisions or explosions since nature would cover most of the affects caused by a blast or it happened in the oceans causing no impact zone.
  
  Some use the Oort Cloud as a rough calendar and the gravitational pull our sun has on it.
Scynet, on 07/02/2008, -2/+1This reply was molested as a kid and is thus confused of it's correct location in the thread.
ericdano, on 07/02/2008, -6/+2Buried.......poor English skills in headline.
Wakkyweed, on 07/02/2008, -3/+2Hey, those meteors struck the Earth anywhere from 100 years to 143 million years ago!

Buried as old.
p0lp0t, on 07/02/2008, -2/+2Once a meteor hits the Earth they are called meteorites! And they are not people! The title should read "Stunning images of meteorite crashes". Goddammit, people!
freeth1nker, on 07/02/2008, -1/+1It was Xenu, in that meteorite.
CSimonds, on 07/02/2008, -1/+1Huked on fonix didna werk 4 hedline riter
Caleb83, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2What's interesting about the tunguska meteor is that, near the center of where the meteor exploded, the trees remained standing, just stripped of leaves and bark, and all life in general.
ohmysac, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2Dugg for the personification of meteors.
- syphix, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1Dugg your reply for the use of "personification" on a Digg thread.
megamod, on 07/02/2008, -1/+2Anyone here to actually talk about the meteors and/or craters instead of picking on the guy's English?

Some of those craters were so huge and could be viewed from so far away that it looked like I was staring at Mars (e.g. Sahara desert crater)
jholden42, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Buried because meteors aren't people.
banderwocky, on 07/02/2008, -2/+1Where's your God now?!!?!
wizzroom, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3WTF is it 'Abuse the English Language Day'?
tyfighter, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1I would like to see pictures of the meteors THAT (not who) landed under control fully intact.
yaosio, on 07/02/2008, -2/+1Are there meteors that on Earth that did not crash into it?
sreenisatish, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Anybody got any of these on Google Earth?
sopadeelle, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1the picture of the kids sitting in the meteor is so badass
neilcreek, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1That would be meteorite. That's what meteors that hit the Earth are called.
KidxGhst, on 07/08/2008, -0/+0im pretty sure those kids in the Otherworldly Object picture are the scariest god damn thing I've ever seen. it's very posible they came with the meteorite.
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Stunning Images of Meteors Who Crash Landed on Earth [PICS]

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