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(meteorobs) On the Vitim bolide in English

Dear All,

The news info on the Vitim bolide in English have appeared:
The first one is from France-Press:

============
MOSCOW, July 25 (AFP) - A giant meteorite that struck the Irkutsk region of
Siberia last September had the force of a nuclear bomb of medium power and
devastated a huge area of taiga, Russian scientists reported Friday.
   A 10-strong expedition of scientists and doctors was unable to identify
and
reach the place where the meteorite landed until mid-May. It was finally
located in the very remote, wooded semi-mountainous region of Bodaibo,
northeast of Irkutsk and Lake Baikal.
   "Over an area of 100 square kilometres (40 square miles) trees were
smashed
in a pattern characteristic of very powerful blast effects," expedition
leader
Vadim Chernobrov told a news conference.
   He said that the meteorite had disintegrated before hitting the ground
and
had left about 20 craters, up to 20 metres (nearly 70 feet) in diameter,
with
an explosion "equivalent to the power of an atomic bomb of medium size".
   A video made by the expedition and shown to reporters showed shattered
and
sometimes burnt tree stumps, charred by the high temperatures released by
the
explosion.
   Meteorites are large rocks which tumble through space and then get caught
in the Earth's gravity, becoming red-hot with the heat of the atmosphere.
   Unlike meteors, which burn up completely as they fall and are
occasionally
visible in the night sky as shooting stars, meteorites are rocks which are
so
big they make it all the way to the ground.
   The brighest such phenomenon ever recorded during human history also
happened over Siberia. In 1908 a meteorite hit the Tunguska region,
devastating the forest over an area of some 2,000 square kilometers (770
square miles).
   Many scientists also believe that in prehistoric times a massive
meteorite
that hit what is now Central America may have caused the disappearance of
the
dinosaurs.
=========

And much more detailed article from RIA-NOVOSTI
========
http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=3345630&startrow=1&date=2
003-07-25&do_alert=0

VITIM METEORITE WAS PROBABLY A COMET
Russian Information Agency Novosti
July 25, 2003
MOSCOW -  Russian scientists who have investigated the place where the
so-called
Vitim meteorite fell presume that what hit the taiga was a small comet. The
object concerned was a large celestial body with a supposed weight of about
100
tons, which at the end of September of last year fell into the basin of the
Vitim River in Eastern Siberia. Witnesses claim that they saw a glowing
object
hurtle through the air and break up into small pieces and then heard a
powerful
explosion. A fire started in the place of the fall, within a radius of 3
kilometres. Because these localities are hard to reach, the investigators
did
not arrive there until this summer.
Members of the Russian expedition said they failed to discover metal
remnants
in the place of the fall. Besides, the character of damage and the radiation
background at the explosion epicentre are substantially different from the
aftereffects of the fall of a meteorite, believe the scientists. The
meteorite
version is also disproved by the fact that edges of meteorites are usually
fused,
and fragments of the celestial body have a dense metallic structure. The
fragments found by the scientists resemble sandstone and "crumble in hands",
one of the expedition participants Vadim Chernobrov, head of the Kosmopoisk
research association, told RIA Novosti.
According to him, some data, however, fail to confirm the comet theory. "The
local water was found to contain tritium, a special kind of radioactive
hydrogen,
and that is rather strange for comets," thinks Chernobrov.
Although near midnight on September 24, 2002, the flying object above
Eastern
Siberia was registered, according to the US Defence Department, by an
American
military satellite, members of the Russian expedition do not rule out
that they deal with a rare natural phenomenon - a giant ball lightning or an
ejection of special subterranean minerals that disintegrate into water and
gas.
Final conclusions will be made later. The investigations on the site of the
blast are continuing.
As estimated by specialists, it was an explosion of such a force that if the
supposed fire-ball had fallen on Moscow, half of the Russian capital would
have
turned into desert, and the other half into ruins.
===========

Best wishes,
Andrei Ol'khovatov
Moscow, Russia




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