More Russian upper atmosphere antics. Scott sent me the link. Russian blog has a bunch of pictures and video. What's really weird is how this alien attack starts with one silent but showy warhead,
and then a few seconds/minutes later you hear huge explosions, but no visuals.
Update: video of sonic boom disappeared, so now we have this one that has the bright flash at the 47 second mark, and the sonic booms starting at 2:45.
Then I read in the BBC story that this thing had exploded in the upper atmosphere: "It would have shattered about 30-50km (18-32 miles) above ground, with most of the meteor burning up." That is way up there, not much air at that altitude, but then at those speeds it wouldn't take much air to make things exciting. Anyway, at 5 seconds a mile, it would take sound a minute and a half to two minutes to reach the ground. The Space Shuttle Columbia was at an altitude of 200,000 feet (38 miles) and traveling at Mach 20 (15,000 MPH) when it was destroyed.
Update: Thinking a little more about this, a meteor 30 miles up, traveling at 5 miles per second would be 750 miles downrange before you heard the sonic boom. Well, it would be 750 miles downrange if it didn't burn up first.
Update 2: Wikipedia: Chelyabinsk meteor
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