![]() ![]() “A lot of smaller asteroids are rubble piles, or loosely bound collections of space gravel, so the possibility of a monolith is really interesting.” “Our research underlines the importance of using these types of high-fidelity models to understand asteroid airburst events,” Pearl said. “When you combine LLNL’s specialized expertise in impact physics and hydrocodes with the Lab’s state-of-the-art High Performance Computing capabilities, we were uniquely positioned to model and simulate the meteor in full 3D. “This is something that can really only be captured with 3D simulation,” said Jason Pearl, lead researcher on the project. If this was the case, researchers said, material strength and fracture played a significant role in the object’s breakup and the resulting blast wave. Their simulations - which closely matched actual observed events - suggest that the object could have been monolithic, or a single chunk of rock. Unlike historical meteoric events, the 2013 airburst event was recorded on cell phone and security camera video from multiple angles and a 500-kilogram fragment was recovered from Lake Chebarkul shortly after impact. Though various research organizations have studied the Chelyabinsk event, LLNL scientists were the first to simulate the Chelyabinsk meteor in full 3D with a material model based on research data from meteorites recovered from the event. Their study underscores the important role material strength and fracture played in the breakup dynamics. The team spent the last three years modeling and simulating the atmospheric breakup of the Chelyabinsk meteor. The resulting meteor, with a diameter of approximate 20 meters (roughly the size of a six-story building), was one of the largest to be detected breaking up in the Earth’s atmosphere in more than a hundred years.Ī decade later, scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Planetary Defense program are releasing details of their research of the airburst event. 15, 2013, a small asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, sending a loud shockwave and sonic boom across the region, damaging buildings and leaving around 1,200 people injured. ![]()
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