How big was the russian meteorite?

[Stephenite]

I've been trying to visualise the size of the meteorite that exploded over Russia last week. I really should be sleeping.

According to NASA it weighed c.10,000tons (US tons?), and the diameter was c.17m. Which is about right for a 'rocky' meteorite given the typical density. So, i reckon, the volume would have been around 3000 cubic metres. Which makes it about the same size as a typical hot air balloon.

Like this:

Or even this:

Yep.. it was, probably, about that big...

 

[Hitchington]

I've read that estimates of it's size range from 3 to 17 metres across and from a few to 10,000 tonnes! The force of the explosion was 20 times more powerful than Hiroshima!

But I think that clown balloon is much scarier!

 

[biggs682]

either way you wouldnt want it as a bogie up your nose !

 

[GIOS]

The original mass of the rock that hit over Russia may be much larger than originally estimated. Calculations by astronomer Margaret Campbell-Brown at the University of Western Ontario in London, reported in the journal Nature, put its mass at 7,000 metric tons. At a density of 3 grams per cubic centimeter (typical of a stony meteorite), that means the parent body was about 15 meters (50 feet) wide. The total blast energy may have been the equivalent of 300 kilotons of TNT. These numbers are still rough estimates. Early reports pegged it as being much smaller, probably because the vast majority of the meteor disintegrated in the atmosphere.

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