Meteorite fragments found in Russia's Urals region

[kiri]

6. energy is a human mental construct, not in the Bible, but explains much

The "explosion" comes from the huge kinetic energy the meteor has, 1/2 mass times velocity squared. v-squared is a big number; mass is relatively unimportant. At the end of its trajectory, all this energy has to go somewhere. Some goes into making the rock hot--but in the short time, thermal conduction cannot dissipate all the heat from the surface to the inner mass. Much of the energy then goes into heating the nearby air. But air molecules cannot get out of the way fast enough--so they bunch up. That creates a pressure wave--a sonic boom. Atoms in the outer layer glow to incandescence; huge thermal stresses appear. Something has to give.

So the combination of very hot atoms, internal stresses, air molecules, makes for an explosion as the kinetic energy is released and dissipated. A small fraction of the energy goes into the kinetic energy of the fragments, but most goes into heat. Light (electromagnetic) and sound (acoustic pressures) arise.