A meteorite unexpectedly pierced through the atmosphere over the Urals Region in Russia on Friday morning and exploded about 12 to 15 miles above ground, creating a shockwave that damaged houses, shattered windows and injured more than 1,200 people. According to NASA, the celestial body, which measures 17 meters in diameter and 10,000 tons in weight, crossed the atmosphere at the supersonic speed of 44,000 miles per hour and released a force of 500 kilotons at the time of its explosion, 30 times that of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Scientists in Russia are still searching Chelyabinsk for leftover debris.
Usually, a meteor crater will be formed when a meteor impacts another celestial body. A number of meteor craters can be found across the Earth, but few have diameters of 20 kilometers or above. Statistics show that on average the Earth experiences only one to three meteorite falls powerful enough to leave a 20 km diameter crater per million years. Following are the top 10 largest meteor craters ever recorded in our planet’s 4.6 billion-year-long history.
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