Boing Boing » russian

Russian paratroopers deploy inflatable Orthodox church

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:25:02 +0000

Bruce Schneier writes, "This is a film of a training session of the Russian Army deploying an inflatable Orthodox church and paratrooping priests. Too weird for me to blog."

Paratrooper priests and airborne temples at the service of Russian army (Thanks, Bruce!)

What exploded over Russia? Space researchers explore, with infrasound sensors

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:34:55 +0000

The bizarre explosion in the skies over in Russia on Feb. 15, 2013 left scientists dumfounded. The asteroid 2012 DA14 was expected to pass some 17K miles over Indonesia, but the Russian impactor wasn't foreseen: it flew from the direction of the sun where telescopes couldn't see it, and surprised everyone hours before the more-publicized asteroid's flyby.

A NASA news item today explains how scientists are piecing together what happened, using infrasound sensors operated by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).

Their purpose is to monitor nuclear explosions. Infrasound is a type of very low-frequency sound wave that only elephants and a few other animals can hear. It turns out that meteors entering Earth's atmosphere cause ripples of infrasound to spread through the air of our planet. By analyzing infrasound records, it is possible to learn how long a meteor was in the air, which direction it traveled, and how much energy it unleashed. The Russian meteor's infrasound signal was was the strongest ever detected by the CTBTO network. The furthest station to record the sub-audible sound was 15,000km away in Antarctica.

Video above: Listen to the infrasound recording, sped up 135x into the range of human hearing. The video comes from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization's YouTube channel.

Peter Brown, University of Western Ontario Professor of Physics, analyzed the data and determined that the asteroid was about 17 meters in diameter and weighed approximately 10,000 metric tons.

"It struck Earth's atmosphere at 40,000 mph and broke apart about 12 to 15 miles above Earth's surface. The energy of the resulting explosion exceeded 470 kilotons of TNT." For comparison, the first atomic bombs produced only 15 to 20 kilotons.
Based on the trajectory of the fireball, analysts have also plotted its orbit. "It came from the asteroid belt, about 2.5 times farther from the sun than Earth."

More: What Exploded over Russia? [NASA Science].

Meet Sveta, Pussy Riot’s perky, pro-Putin antithesis

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 04:18:48 +0000

In the NYT, a piece by Sophia Kishkovsky on Svetlana Kuritsyna, "the very antithesis" of the imprisoned protest-art group Pussy Riot. Sveta is described as "a disarmingly direct, red-cheeked, 20-year-old Putin supporter from an impoverished rural region" who stands out "for her very normality and has become an accidental celebrity after an innocent, and somewhat inarticulate, video interview in which she glowingly praised Mr. Putin." The clip became a meme, with more than 2 million YouTube views, she now has her own reality show.

Animated Russian "Winnie the Pooh" from 1972 is quite the Nietzschean bummer

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:36:21 +0000

[Video Link] SoyuzMultfilm's "Adventures of Winnie the Pooh," 1972, presents the iconic tale of Pooh and pals with a tone very different from more familiar adaptations. For starters, Pooh is an annoying, aggressive hedgehog of a bear; Eeyore seems to be paraphrasing Nietzsche, and needs antidepressants even more badly than his English-speaking cousin. Here's another, and another, and another, and another. Update: As blogged on Boing Boing previously, in 2008! (thanks, Rusalka!)