Wunderground Video Blog

Considering that about eight days prior to the object coming down and "breaking up" over the Urals in Russia with the largest intact piece being described as "about the size of a bus", an asteroid that pretty closely matched these dimensions had been predicted to pass within 17,000 miles of Earth on that Friday, my first guess would be: Asteroid hit Earth.

The locations predicted where the Asteroid would be "most visible" were in Australia, Indonesia and Eastern Europe. It would seem to have been visible in the extreme! If a stray piece traveled to California, we must allow that even Asteroids might have a sense of humor.

A body of this size entering Earth's atmosphere could certainly do more than injure a few hundred people and shake things up in one isolated area. I would expect Scientists to be scouring the Urals and testing to be in progress.

I would also expect a better alert system to be implemented when an object like this has potential for hitting our planet -- particularly in populated areas. A small Asteroid makes, as evidenced, a major impact and some "ripples" that may not have been anticipated.

My uneducated guess is that a sizable portion of the Asteroid, which was said by Astronomers to be "not a significantly large one", hit the Earth. This was not a trivial event. I've seen many meteorites and even falling space debris...but never anything like this.