Daytime fireball roughly a 5-ton meteor, NASA estimates

[Laurentien2]

Not even the big raindrop yet.

Breaking News

Daytime fireball roughly a 5-ton meteor, NASA estimates

By Peter Mucha

Inquirer Staff Writer
Early Monday afternoon, a bright object flashed across the sky before vanishing with a flash, according to scores of eyewitnesses from Virginia to Massachusetts.

The likeliest explanation is that a large meteor - a space rock hurtling through the atmosphere - passed eastward over the North Jersey-New York City area.

It might have been 5 feet in diameter with a weight of more 5 metric tons, judging from reports that it blazed as bright as a full moon, said NASA scientist Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

He based his estimate on "a reasonable speed" of 33,500 m.p.h.

Good thing it didn't hit anything.

"My crude estimate of the energy of this fireball is about 100 tons of TNT, which means it was capable of producing a crater 125 feet in diameter and about 15 feet deep, assuming an impact into sandstone," Cooke said.

The Earth's atmosphere, is strafed by such rocks about once a month, usually over the oceans, and a similar event may have happened near Jackson, Miss., on Jan. 11, he said.

Apparently, this intruder was much larger than the typical debris in shooting stars or meteor showers. At night, even a grain of sand can cause a bright streak across the sky.

Cooke said a better estimate would be available in a few days, after data is collected from "infrasound stations to try to determine the meteor's energy from the sound waves emitted as it flew through the atmosphere."

Eyewitness reports put the time of Monday's fireball around 12:35 to 12:45 p.m. Eastern time.

Here's a sampling from reports to Meteor/Meteorite News (http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com):

Once a month!!!

They seem to happen daily lately.

 

[Laura]

Once a month!!!

They seem to happen daily lately.

Yeah. Doncha just love the way the story keeps changing? Nothing to see here, move along folks, it's all normal!

Some days it feels like I have awoken in a world gone stark, raving mad.

 

[Laurentien2]

Once a month!!!

They seem to happen daily lately.

Yeah. Doncha just love the way the story keeps changing? Nothing to see here, move along folks, it's all normal!

Some days it feels like I have awoken in a world gone stark, raving mad.

I know what you mean. The worst is that if a meteorite like this one was to explode on the surface, let say in a big city, they probably already have plan to make it look or just say that it was a nuclear attack by terrorist. They slowly conditioned the population to expect one, this week article from sott, http://www.sott.net/articles/show/223981-Major-False-Flag-gone-awry-, is a good example. For Christ sake they did it with the pentagon strike, they think they will get away with and meteorite one.

 

[Keit]

Once a month!!!

They seem to happen daily lately.

And even on the same day!

Here, take a look at this large fireball sighting that happened on the same day in Calgary at 6:55 am. There are two hours difference between New York and Calgary, so it happened at 8:55 New York time. Definitely not the same meteorite, especially since Calgary's one was green and North Eastern had a white tail.