(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL, USA) have created a 3D model of the explosion of the Chebarkul (Chelyabinsk) meteorite that occurred in 2013, LLNL said in a statement.
It is noted that unlike other similar events, the passage of the Chebarkul meteorite was recorded on video from different angles, and a 500-kilogram fragment was recovered from Lake Chebarkul shortly after the impact.
“The simulation, which closely matched the actual observed events, suggests that the object could be a monolithic, solid piece of rock,” the report said.
The LLNR physicists estimated that the meteorite had a diameter of about 20 meters and was one of the largest of those that exploded in the earth’s atmosphere in the last 100 years.
Project lead researcher Jason Pearl elaborates that many of the smaller asteroids are rubble piles or loosely bound clumps of space gravel, “so the possibility of a monolith is really interesting.”
To study the decay mode of a monolithic meteorite, scientists used smoothed particle hydrodynamics, a computational method for modeling the dynamics of solid mechanics and fluid flows.
Simulations have shown that an airburst occurs when large cracks form at the rear of the asteroid under tensile stress and propagate towards its front.
At an altitude of about 30 km, meteorite fragments separate from each other, then the debris cloud slows down, and the fragments continue to break up into smaller and smaller parts.
“It was like the asteroid was shrinking in the direction of travel, breaking into separate pieces that began to separate and break perpendicular to the direction of travel,” said LLNR physicist Mike Owen.
According to scientists, a better understanding of the decay process can be used to build better statistical models of the risk associated with asteroids of this kind.
The long-term goal of the study will be to use these models to assess the ground effects of a future meteor event, predicting the region that could potentially be affected.
On February 15, 2013, a meteorite exploded in the sky over the Chelyabinsk region. The blast wave shattered windows in houses, destroyed the roofs of buildings, both in the residential sector and industrial and social facilities.
More than 1.6 thousand people were injured.
During the search from the day of Lake Chebarkul, divers got 12 fragments, five of which were recognized as fragments of a meteorite. The weight of the largest of them is about 570 kg.
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