英语听力：探索发现 2014-06-11 BBC 地平线：陨石的真相-13

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Yep. It’s about 90 kilometres up, at that stage, travelling at 17.5 kilometres per second.

 

Using the different camera positions, scientists have pinpointed¹ the exact position at which the meteor entered the atmosphere. And by tracking the speed and angle of the shadows that the meteor casts, they’ve calculated its velocity². Together this is enough to tract³ back the asteroid⁴’s path from deep space. Although the asteroid and Earth orbits are different durations and at angles to one another, their clockwork regularity⁵ means that we were bound to collide. So this shows speeded up, obviously, three and a half hours, the last three and a half hours of the life of this little rascal⁶. 

 

Yeah, it’s nice to see it from the asteroid’s point of view. The thing to remember is that this asteroid has been in its orbit, going around the Sun, roughly once every two years. We believe…

 

Minding its own business.

 

Absolutely.

 

And unfortunately on February 15 it found a planet in the way. Sure enough, at all the 20 hours the meteor entered our atmosphere above Siberia. On this path and at this time, it was Chelyabinsk that took the full impact. But could there have been another scenario⁷? The meteorite⁸ landed at a latitude⁹ of 55 degrees north. Had it arrived just a few hours later, we would have been directly in its flight path.

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