![Ram pressure meteor](https://loka.nahovitsyn.com/45.jpg)
Minutes later, a shock wave blasted out nearby windows, injuring hundreds of people. When it entered Earth's atmosphere, it created a bright fire ball. The explosion came as a surprise and brought in energy comparable to a small nuclear weapon. Melosh's team looked to the 2013 Chelyabinsk event when a meteoroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, to explain the phenomenon. "If the air can move through the passages in the meteorite, it can easily get inside and blow off pieces," Melosh said. "There's a big gradient between high-pressure air in front of the meteor and the vacuum of air behind it," said Jay Melosh, Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University in the US and co-author of the paper. Iron meteorites make about a twentieth of all space rocks arriving on.
![ram pressure meteor ram pressure meteor](http://www.hermanheyn.com/Graphics/Meteor_peekskill_thomas.jpg)
Of course, this result does not imply that the first interstellar meteor was artificially made by a technological civilization and not natural in origin. The new research, published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, suggests that Earth's atmosphere is a better shield from meteoroids than previously thought. The last flare occurred at a ram pressure of 194 MPa, implying that the yield strength was in the range of 113-194 MPa.
![ram pressure meteor ram pressure meteor](https://static.cargurus.com/images/forsale/2020/03/25/05/16/2016_ram_1500-pic-4282781329460954771-1024x768.jpeg)
Researchers knew that meteoroids often blew up before they reach the Earth's surface, but they did not know why. Atmospheric ram pressure (not friction) heats the impacting body to a very high temperature, and as the hot object streaks through the atmosphere, it leaves behind a glowing trail of superheated atmospheric gases and vaporized meteor material that rapidly cools and fades in just a few seconds. The uncertainty in the atmosphere mass density was estimated to be 25 using NAVGEM-HA data. When a meteor comes hurtling toward Earth, the high-pressure air in front of it seeps into its pores and cracks, pushing its body apart and causing it to explode, say scientists. The aerodynamic ram pressure at the moment of fragmentation was used as a proxy for compressive strength, and strengths of an additional 19 fragmenting meteoroids were measured in the same way. Follow us on Representational pic - Why meteoroids often blow up before hitting Earth
![Ram pressure meteor](https://loka.nahovitsyn.com/45.jpg)