Dust from a meteoric explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February may have lingered in the atmosphere for three months after the fact, Space.com reported.
The meteor weighed about 11,000 metric tons and its explosion's output of energy was 30 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.
When the meteor exploded 15 miles above the Russian city in February, pieces of the giant rock crashed down through windows, hit cars so hard their alarms went off and injured about 1,000 people.
A new NASA study has found a plume of dust left behind in the Earth's atmosphere with tons of material floating in the cloud.
"Thirty years ago, we could only state that the plume was embedded in the stratospheric jet stream," Paul Newman, chief scientist for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's atmospheric science lab, said in a statement. "Today, our models allow us to precisely trace the bolide and understand its evolution as it moves around the globe."
The team of scientists, led by NASA Goddard atmospheric physicist Nick Gorkavyi, of Chelyabinsk, wondered if they could use NASA's Suomi NPP satellite.
"Indeed, we saw the formation of a new dust belt in Earth's stratosphere, and achieved the first space-based observation of the long-term evolution of a bolide plume," Gorkavyi said in a statement.
The researchers said three months into the study they could detect a "belt" of dust all across the Earth's northern hemisphere. Tracking the dust cloud gave the researchers insight as to how the plume's particles behaved in the Earth's atmosphere.
For example, heavier particles moved more slowly as they fell toward the Earth while lighter pieces maintained their altitude and speed. The plume is also not out of the ordinary, the researchers said.
On daily average, the Earth is hit with 30 metric tons of space dust. Volcanoes and other Earthly sources deposit far greater numbers of particles into the stratosphere.
