Meteor Menace

On February 15, 2013, a meteorite entered the atmosphere, lighting up the sky over the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. The shock wave shattered windows, damaged countless buildings, and injured more than 1,500 people. On the same day, asteroid 2012 DA 14 passed within just 26,000 kilometers of Earth, the closest distance ever recorded. Although these two events were unrelated, they are a good example of the threat that meteorites pose to our planet. Throughout history, there have been numerous impacts with catastrophic consequences, as evidenced by the Barringer Crater in Arizona, caused some 50,000 years ago by a meteorite about 50 meters in diameter, or the most famous of all, the one that struck the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.