Explosion heard in NV, CA traced to meteor

[realitybugll]

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/04/22/2317996/explosion-heard-in-nv-ca-traced.html

seems like quite a rare event because of the size.

RENO, Nev. --
Astronomers say a loud explosion heard across a large swath of Nevada and California on Sunday morning was likely caused by a meteor.

The sound of the explosion around 8 a.m. prompted a flood of calls to law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Sierra Nevada in the two states. The explosion rattled windows and shook houses from Reno to Winnemucca in Nevada, and from the Sacramento to Bakersfield areas in California.

Some people in the two states reported seeing a fireball streak across the sky at the same time.

Dan Ruby of the Fleischmann Planetarium at the University of Nevada, Reno, says the reports indicate the meteor broke up above Earth somewhere over the Sierra southwest of Reno.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Seems like things are continuing to "heat up"/accelerate.

 

[Vulcan59]

Check this article out. :)

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/244485-Sierra-Fireball-Decoded-Not-a-Lyrid

 

[ocean59]

Check this article out. :)

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/244485-Sierra-Fireball-Decoded-Not-a-Lyrid

Very interesting calculations indeed! I didn't know they were able to do that.

 

[Gawan]

It did even make into German news and is carried from a lot of newspapers, which happens not that often.

http://de.sott.net/articles/show/6958

And so far nothing about a crashed satellite is said ;)

 

[Laura]

What's interesting about this one is not the explosion - a lot of those have been happening and get "explained away" - but that they admitted right from the beginning what it probably was.

The first notice I received about it came from the Sacramento Bee; apparently this thing happened right in their "back yard" so to say, and the "diagnosis" was made and published before anybody in the media had a chance to suppress it or explain it away. Then, a bit later, NBC (I think) carried it and "explained" it as just part of ordinary periodic shower. After that, it sort of ran away from them.

Now they are saying that it is NOT part of the Lyrid shower (or probably not), but an odd one out, so we can see still a bit of scrambling to manage the event. Can't be having regular meteor showers populated with minivan sized rocks, ya know?

 

[Ca.]

Hmmmm, the size of a mini van, and the equivalent of 3.8 kilotons of TNT...... .....?

SIERRA FIREBALL DECODED
http://spaceweather.com/

On Sunday morning, April 22nd, just as the Lyrid meteor shower was dying down, a spectacular fireball exploded over California's Sierra Nevada mountain range. The loud explosion rattled homes from central California to Reno, Nevada, and beyond. According to Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Envronment Office, the source of the blast was a meteoroid about the size of a minivan.

"Elizabeth Silber at Western University has searched for infrasound signals from the explosion," says Cooke. "Infrasound is very low frequency sound which can travel great distances. There were strong signals at 2 stations, enabling a triangulation of the energy source at 37.6N, 120.5W. This is marked by a yellow flag in the map below."

"The energy is estimated at a whopping 3.8 kilotons of TNT, so this was a big event," he continues. "I am not saying there was a 3.8 kiloton explosion on the ground in California. I am saying that the meteor possessed this amount of energy before it broke apart in the atmosphere. [The map] shows the location of the atmospheric breakup, not impact with the ground."

"The fact that sonic booms were heard indicates that this meteor penetrated very low in atmosphere, which implies a speed less than 15 km/s (33,500 mph). Assuming this value for the speed, I get a mass for the meteor of around 70 metric tons. Hazarding a further guess at the density of 3 grams per cubic centimeter (solid rock), I calculate a size of about 3-4 meters, or about the size of a minivan."

Super Blast 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUBzwJx3jwM
eksplosion of Half Kiloton of TNT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCEmrH42FKM

"This meteor was probably not a Lyrid; without a trajectory, I cannot rule out a Lyrid origin, but I think it likely that it was a background or sporadic meteor."

News and eyewitness reports: #1, #2, #3, #4.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/explosion-heard-in-nevada-california-was-likely-caused-by-meteor-astronomers-say/2012/04/22/gIQAZczXaT_story.html

http://www.ktvn.com/story/17652544/update-large-boom-heard-around-region-sunday

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball2/public.php?start_date=2012-04-01&end_date=2012-04-31&state&event_id=588&submit=Find%2BReports

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t3#/video/us/2012/04/23/dnt-ca-meteor-boom-reported.kcra

This black and white photo from a rooftop webcam released Thursday, April 15, 2010, by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences shows a fireball as it passed over Madison, Wis. Scientists say it's likely a similar meteor flew over parts of northern California and Nevada Sunday morning.

 

[Ca.]

Wounder if this admission as a way of breaking the ice, to the general public, as programing pretext to induce conditioning for what is yet to come. All of a sudden the Media is spreading the undeniable TRUTH.

2012 March 20
_http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120320.html

 

[Vulcan59]

Hmmmm, the size of a mini van, and the equivalent of 3.8 kilotons of TNT...... .....?

FWIW, now "they" are stating that it was the equivalent of a 5 kiloton explosion.

 

[Niall]

As fireball after fireball comes down, they're really cranking up the BS!

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/244543-Second-Rare-Daytime-Fireball-Explodes-Over-US-This-Month-Van-sized-Meteor-NOT-part-of-Lyrid-Shower

 

[Gawan]

As fireball after fireball comes down, they're really cranking up the BS!

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/244543-Second-Rare-Daytime-Fireball-Explodes-Over-US-This-Month-Van-sized-Meteor-NOT-part-of-Lyrid-Shower

Taken from the article comment:

"It happens right around April 22 every year..."

Exactly .