Irkutsk oblast with Vitim bolide impact site

The 2002 Vitim event or Bodaybo event is believed to be an

impact Impact may refer to: * Impact (mechanics), a high force or shock (mechanics) over a short time period * Impact, Texas, a town in Taylor County, Texas, US Science and technology * Impact crater, a meteor crater caused by an impact event * Imp ...

by a

bolide A bolide is normally taken to mean an exceptionally bright meteor, but the term is subject to more than one definition, according to context. It may refer to any large crater-forming body, or to one that explodes in the atmosphere. It can be a ...

(fireball) in the

Vitim River The Vitim (russian: Витим; evn, Витым, ; sah, Виитим, ; Buryat and mn, Витим, ''Vitim'') is a major tributary of the Lena. Its source is east of Lake Baikal, at the confluence of rivers Vitimkan from the west and China f ...

basin. It occurred near the town of Bodaybo in the Mamsko-Chuisky district of

Irkutsk Oblast Irkutsk Oblast (russian: Ирку́тская о́бласть, Irkutskaya oblast; bua, Эрхүү можо, Erkhüü mojo) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in southeastern Siberia in the basins of the Angara, Lena, and N ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

on September 25, 2002 at approximately 22:00 (local time, UTC/GMT +9 hours:

ISO 8601 ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time-related data. It is maintained by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988, w ...

format 2002-09-25T13:00Z). The event was detected by a US military missile-defense satellite.

Analysis

Attempts were made to define the magnitude of the explosion. U.S. military analysts calculated it was around . Peter Brown estimates the total yield of both Bodiabo and Tagish Lake at about 2 kilotons—a factor of roughly 10,000 less than the

Tunguska event The Tunguska event (occasionally also called the Tunguska incident) was an approximately 12- megaton explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of June 3 ...

. Russian physicist Andrey Olkhovatov estimates it at 4–5 kilotons. Information about the event appeared in the mass media and among scientists after only a week. A small expedition, sent by the Institute of Sun–Earth Physics (

Irkutsk Irkutsk ( ; rus, Иркутск, p=ɪrˈkutsk; Buryat and mn, Эрхүү, ''Erhüü'', ) is the largest city and administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. With a population of 617,473 as of the 2010 Census, Irkutsk is the 25th-larges ...

), tried to find a meteorite within about 10 km from Bodaybo town (people told them– "it has fallen beyond the nearest mountain").

Expeditions

* 1st — Russian

EMERCOM The Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defence, Emergency Situations and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (russian: Министерство Российской Федерации по делам гражданской ...

team attempted to find fragments of the meteorite near Bodaybo. * 2nd — October, 2002 expedition of

Irkutsk State University Irkutsk State University (russian: Ирку́тский госуда́рственный университе́т) was founded in October 1918 in Irkutsk, Siberia. Nowadays Irkutsk State University is a large scientific and educational institu ...

(leader S. Yazev). Official expeditions in 2002–2003 never reached the impact site, situated in remote

taiga Taiga (; rus, тайга́, p=tɐjˈɡa; relates to Mongolic and Turkic languages), generally referred to in North America as a boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, sp ...

Kosmopoisk expedition

As reported by the

ufology Ufology ( ) is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial alien visitors). While there are instances of government, private, and ...

organization

Kosmopoisk Kosmopoisk (russian: «Космопо́иск», full name: Общеросси́йская нау́чно-иссле́довательская обще́ственная организа́ция, ОНИОО, translated "All-Russian Research Publ ...

, in May 2003 an expedition, performed by Kosmopoisk (leader —

Vadim Chernobrov Vadim Alexandrovich Chernobrov (russian: Вади́м Алекса́ндрович Чернобро́в (1965, Volgograd Oblast – 18 May 2017, Moscow) was the founder and leader of the Kosmopoisk organisation. He was a ufology and mystery enthusi ...

) reached a presumed impact point (about 50 km from Vitimsky settle point). The situation there looked similar to that of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River after the

in 1908. Snow and water samples were analyzed and found to contain an abnormal amount of

tritium Tritium ( or , ) or hydrogen-3 (symbol T or H) is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen with half-life about 12 years. The nucleus of tritium (t, sometimes called a ''triton'') contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of ...

, as well as

radioactive Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is consi ...

isotope Isotopes are two or more types of atoms that have the same atomic number (number of protons in their nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemical element), and that differ in nucleon numbers ( mass num ...

s of

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, p ...

and

caesium Caesium (IUPAC spelling) (or cesium in American English) is a chemical element with the symbol Cs and atomic number 55. It is a soft, silvery-golden alkali metal with a melting point of , which makes it one of only five elemental metals that a ...

. Chernobrov suggested that the Vitim event could be caused by a low density

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

nucleus with a diameter of about 30–100 meters.

References

External links

The Vitim bolide
at Meteorites Australia (Meteorites.com.au) (latest update 26 March 2006)

(7 June 2003), Cambridge Conference Network archive

(10 July 2003), Cambridge Conference Network archive * * * Kasatkina, E.A. & Shumilov, O.I. (2005). ''Some atmospheric and magnetospheric effects possibly related to the Vitim bolide impact''. Retrieved June 24, 2005

* Chernobrov, Vadim & Soleny, Alexander & Lawrence, Maria (2003). ''Results from the VITIM-2003 expedition'

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vitim event Explosions in 2002

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

Explosions in Russia History of Siberia 2002 in Russia Natural disasters in Russia September 2002 events in Russia

Analysis

Expeditions

Kosmopoisk expedition

See also

References

External links