People in Chelyabinsk, Russia were greeted this morning by a major meteor event that lit up their dawn skies like the daytime Sun. I have no idea how the driver of this car stayed so calm, but thank goodness for dashboard cameras which are ubiquitous in Russia due to massive amounts of insurance fraud.
The meteor could be seen up to 125 miles away and the shockwave that followed (as our atmosphere slowed the meteor down below Mach 1) was strong enough to shatter windows and set off car alarms. Notice how the shockwave comes long after the meteor has passed and the contrails are beginning to dissipate. Nice physics lesson there about the speed of sound versus the speed of light. WARNING: the sonic booms are *very* loud in this video.
For more on this, I refer you to the excellent Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy.
