astronomy

Kamchatka meteor

Kamchatka meteor is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kamchatka meteor rather than just read about it. In short: The Kamchatka meteor was a meteor that exploded in an air burst off the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia on 18 December 2018. At around midday, local time, an asteroid roughly 10 meters in diameter entered the atmosphere at a speed of 32.0 km/s (72,000 mph), with a TNT equivalent energy of 173 kilotons, more than 10 times the energy of the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Key takeaways

Kamchatka meteor belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kamchatka meteor to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kamchatka meteor from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Kamchatka meteor was a meteor that exploded in an air burst off the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia on 18 December 2018. At around midday, local time, an asteroid roughly 10 meters in diameter entered the atmosphere at a speed of 32.0 km/s (72,000 mph), with a TNT equivalent energy of 173 kilotons, more than 10 times the energy of the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The object entered at a steep angle of 7 degrees, close to the zenith, terminating in an air burst at an altitude of around 25 km (16 mi; 82,000 ft).

Overview Based on the energy and velocity of the impact, the asteroid had a mass of 1600 tonnes and a diameter of between 10 and 14 meters (33 and 46 ft) depending on its density. The impact was announced around 8 March 2019, and is the largest asteroid to impact Earth since the 20-meter Chelyabinsk meteor's entry in February 2013, and the third largest recorded meteor since 1900 after that and the Tunguska event. NASA's Terra satellite and the Japanese Meteorological Agency's Himawari 8 recorded the dust trail from the event, although their observation interval was too long to image the air burst itself. The dominant period of the CTBTO infrasound was very long, on the order of 20 to 25 seconds, corresponding to energy on the order of 100 to 200 kilotons. The shockwave was strong enough to have cracked windows had the shockwave been over a built-up region. Even though it was only six years after the previous one, events as large as this are statistically estimated to occur only once every few decades on average. As of January 2017, over 723,000 asteroids were being tracked in the Solar System, with more discovered, lost and recovered daily. Since 2011, on average, 80 new minor planets of diameter 30–50 meters or more are discovered each day. As of March 2019, 724 (roughly one in a thousand) are classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA). Neither the Chelyabinsk nor the Kamchatka meteors were on the list and would have been too small to detect with current resources.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kamchatka meteor

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kamchatka meteor claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kamchatka meteor before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kamchatka meteor ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kamchatka meteor

In research: Kamchatka meteor appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kamchatka meteor in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kamchatka meteor is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2010s Earth impact events, 2018 in outer space, 2019 in science, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kamchatka meteor outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kamchatka meteor in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kamchatka meteor means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kamchatka meteor out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kamchatka meteor in simple terms?

Why does Kamchatka meteor matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kamchatka meteor?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kamchatka meteor.