Local scientist helps explain meteorite
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Most people are probably glad they were nowhere near Russia when the meteor came crashing down. But Ray Shubinski isn't like most people. Video by ktnv.com
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Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) -- Most people are probably glad they were nowhere near Russia when the meteor came crashing down. But Ray Shubinski isn't like most people.
"Oh, I wish I had been there," he said.
Shubinski is a former astronomy teacher, a contributing editor to Astronomy Magazine, and he's got a small collection of meteorites in his Henderson home.
"I've worked with meteorites most of my career, always been fascinated by them. Anytime something like this happens, I get very excited to find out what kind they were, the trajectory that took place."
He feels bad that so much damage was created by the pressure wave in Russia, and that so many people were injured. But he says the debris being collected there now can yield untold amounts of information.
"A a slice of meteorite can tell us about the early solar system. In fact, we learn about the age of the earth from meteorites."
Shubinski says meteors are much smaller than asteroids, so they're hard to see and track. But he hopes that won't be the case much longer.
"Astronomers have been working the last 20-25 years on setting up networks of telescopes that can spot these things and then track them," he says. "The technology is becoming better and better."
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