Monday, April 27, 2015 at 4:00 PM

JILA Auditorium

Mark Boslough, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM

"Reassessing impact risk after the airburst over Chelyabinsk, Russia"

Abstract:

On Feb. 15, 2013, a small asteroid exploded near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Its proximity to a population center led to many injuries and widespread blast damage, but also yielded a plethora of serendipitous data in the form of video footage from security and dashboard cameras. Combined with seismic, infrasound, and satellite records, this data provides a rich and multi-faceted means to determine the projectile size and entry parameters, and to develop a self-consistent model of the airburst. Hydrodynamic simulations can now be initialized with extremely accurate energy depositions at correct locations, and results can be compared to observations to validate the models and better understand the physical phenomena associated with airbursts. This presentation will review the physics of airbursts, summarize the Chelyabinsk event, present computational models, and provide an updated assessment of the risk associated with impacts.

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.

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