Sandia Labs researcher Mark Boslough to model Russian meteor

Sandia National Laboratories scientist Mark Boslough was up late Thursday evening at his computer working on a talk when he saw the first news of the Russian meteorite. One of the world’s leading experts on the physics of meteorites as they enter Earth’s atmosphere and explode, Boslough has seen a lot of viral videos of space rocks, but it was immediately obvious this was like none before.

“I was pretty much blown away,” Boslough said in an interview. “This is going to be a benchmark.”

The meteorite, which may be the largest since the famous Tunguska event in 1908, will give scientists a chance to compare their computer simulations with real-life data. Not only will modern researchers benefit from the widespread videotaped record created by Russian observers in real time, but seismic records and other modern data unavailable for the Tunguska event can be used to study the event, Boslough said.

Boslough’s specialty is computer modeling of the fiery trail and blast as space rocks burn up in the atmosphere, and the first step will be to build a computer model of this event, he said.

See here for my 2007 story on Boslough’s meteorite simulations.