Woke up in the middle of the night to check Twitter and see the planet has been hit by a meteorite. You don't get that every day. Came down over Russia (why is it always Russia?) Four hundred hurt, mostly by broken glass and debris, and the roof of a factory collapsed.
Ah, Russian dashcams:
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My learnings from that are as follows: If something travelling at many times the speed of sound goes overhead completely silently, don't stand near plate glass windows until *after* the sonic boom arrives.
There were clearly two fragments travelling together. There seems to be substantial confusion about whether they actually exploded or it was just the shockwave that did the damage. We hear that there is an 'impact crater' in the ice of a lake but I guess we'll know more when I get up again in the real morning.
There's another one due in a few hours, size of an Olympic™ ® swimming pool (who estimates hurtling sky rocks in units of 'the swimming pool'? Bloody astronomers) but this is slated to miss the planet by about 17,150 thousand miles which sounds like a lot but is less than the mileage on what I think of as my new car. And is closer to Earth than our communications satellites.
Also, the Pope recently resigned. Does he know something we don't know? Any Mayans want to comment?
