Shockwave from Meteor Over Russia Went Around the World Twice

Equipment usually used to study earthquakes

Do you remember the meteor that blazed a trail across the Russian sky on February 15, 2013? The resulting shock wave had a major impact on the city of Chelyabinsk, leading to property damage and causing more than 1,500 injuries to the city's residents. Now, scientists, supervised by Alexis Le Pichon of the French Atomic Energy Commission, believe that the shock wave was so strong that it traveled the globe twice.

"For the first time since the establishment of the IMS infrasound network, multiple arrivals involving waves that traveled twice round the globe have been clearly identified," the scientists write in a paper recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.