Center for Astrophysics Research and Technologies Seminar Series
The half-megaton airburst over Chelyabinsk, Russia
Presented by Mark Boslough (SNL)
On Feb. 15, 2013, a small asteroid exploded near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Its proximity to a population center led to many injuries and widespread blast damage, but also yielded a plethora of serendipitous data in the form of video footage from security and dashboard cameras. Combined with seismic, infrasound, and satellite records, this data provides a rich and multi-faceted means to determine the projectile size and entry parameters, and to develop a self-consistent model of the airburst. Hydrodynamic simulations can now be initialized with extremely accurate energy depositions at correct locations, and results can be compared to observations to validate the models and better understand the physical phenomena associated with airbursts. This presentation will review the physics of airbursts, summarize the Chelyabinsk event, and present computational models.
Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
2:00 pm, Thursday, December 4, 2014
PAIS-2540, PAIS
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