NewsTracker Answers for week of Feb. 18, 2013

Q: A meteor crashing near Chelyabinsk in Russia's Ural mountains last Friday injured more than 1,000 people as the shock wave blew out windows and rocked buildings. Where is Russia on this map?

Circle the area on this map

Q: It is estimated the explosion that occurred when the small asteroid hit the atmosphere released the equivalent energy of 300,000 tons of TNT at an altitude of 12 to 15 miles above the surface. It was the largest blast of its kind since a 1908 explosion at Tunguska . . .

A. Australia

B. Peru

C. Siberia

D. Alaska

C. The 1908 event flattened millions of trees over 800 square miles in a remote, largely uninhabited area of central Siberia about 1,200 miles away from Friday’s explosion. Siberia extends over almost all of north Asia and covers roughly 77 percent of Russia's total territory.

Q: NASA scientists said the Russian event had nothing to do with a much larger asteroid that passed very close to the Earth a few hours later. That one came closest to our planet near Indonesia which is several thousand miles . . .

A. Northeast of Chelyabinsk

B. Southeast of Chelyabinsk

C. Northwest of Chelyabinsk

D. Southwest of Chelyabinsk

B. The asteroid streaked over the Indian Ocean at an altitude of about 17,200 miles from the surface -- closer than many telecommunications satellites. If that asteroid had hit Earth, NASA scientists say it would have released the energy of 2.5 million tons of TNT – about ten times the power of the Russian strike.

Q: Asteroids and comets have struck the Earth countless times in the past and will strike us in the future. The impact linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs occurred about 65 million years on the Yucatan Peninsula in . . .

A. Russia

B. Canada

C. Mexico

D. South Africa

C. The diameter of the Chicxulub Crater is estimated to be from 106 to a whooping 186 miles, which if proved would make it the largest known impact site. While craters are easy to see on the surface of the Moon, erosion makes it difficult to identify most Earth craters.

Q: What is often found at the Earth's impact sites?

A. Diamonds

B. Oil

C. Gold

D. All of the above

D. Scientists believe the impacts created great heat and pressure to form diamonds, shattered deep rock formations to allow oil to rise and fill the cracks, and released the Earth's magma to fill deep craters with metals like gold, copper and nickel.