Russian Cameras Capture Meteor Shower

Rocks fall on Siberia.

Fragments of a meteor have fallen on Siberia, leading to hundreds of injuries. There's a lot of footage floating around online, including this striking clip from a dash cam:

"One of the big advantages of living in a country where everyone seems to have a camera pointing out the window of their car," Jalopnik notes, "is that when something truly bonkers happens, you have lots of footage for the world to watch and say 'holy shit' at." I can't deny that. But while Russians do seem to have a special penchant for dash cams, the rise of phone cams has meant something similar for other parts of the world.

Similar, but not identical. If those pieces of extraterrestrial rock had landed in London, most of the cameras would have been handheld and the footage much shakier. Some future historian is going to get a PhD thesis out of the ways these local differences in technology affect amateur cinematography.

Bonus links: I first wrote about the rise of vernacular news footage back in 2001. The topic felt forward-looking back then, but by 2005 the subject was old hat.

One more bonus link: The inevitable conspiracy theories have begun.