Fireball tally from American Meteor Society

[Cosmos]

Well, 2013 is almost gone and I had a bit of fun today while creating some charts:

Same chart without the grid:

Without the lines + grid:

Without the lines and the grid:

Only with the lines + grid and without the bars:

Only with the lines and without grid and bars:

And now a closer look into the chart:

The data for 2013, will most likely correct itself a bit up, in the next coming days and weeks.

 

[Aeneas]

Thanks for the update Pashalis and the great charts! I did make a chart yesterday too, which was nowhere near the quality that you made. As it happened my computer crashed completely, so I am back to the old backup PC.

The charts are very telling and one can only wonder how bad it will be in 2014

 

[1984]

Nice charts, Pashalis!

Wow - if one hadn't been following the sightings reported over the last several years and then had a look at those charts, they'd have to be fairly dim not to see the dramatic increase!

 

[c.a.]

Nice charts, Pashalis!

Wow - if one hadn't been following the sightings reported over the last several years and then had a look at those charts, they'd have to be fairly dim not to see the dramatic increase!

Yeah what of the one's that hit mid point in the oceans, or in isolated areas of the planet, where no eye's wittiness the event? One could probably add 10, or 15 percent increase to tally's perhaps.

 

[Gloria54]

Nice charts, Pashalis!

Wow - if one hadn't been following the sightings reported over the last several years and then had a look at those charts, they'd have to be fairly dim not to see the dramatic increase!

They are very telling...but everyone that I try to get to pay attention ..are fairly dim

 

[Pierre]

Well, 2013 is almost gone and I had a bit of fun today while creating some charts:

It seems that an acceleration of the process occurred in 2013. Total number of sightings was roughly multiplied by 3 between 2012 and 2013 :O.

While some of this increase might be due to a growing number of people reporting what they see I don't think it can fully account for this three fold increase.

 

[Niall]

Very interesting!

So there was roughly a 33% increase in the number of events reported... and the quality of those events may also have increased because of the three-fold increase in the numbers of people who witnessed them.

 

[Cosmos]

As suspected the numbers for 2013 are still not all registered (reviewed) and thus are still climbing slightly...
For example, another 62 Events were added to the 3445 Events that were there when I created the charts yesterday (so 3507 Events as of now).

I guess it will take a few days, weeks or months until we have the final numbers (more or less) for 2013 from AMS.

I'll post another updated version of those Charts at the end of this week.

 

[Keit]

Here is an interesting video that talks about it. Notice that this person has no idea what's going on or why, so he makes all kind of crazy speculations, but he does mention that we are being told by the media that it's supposedly normal, while it's clearly not.

https://youtu.be/cfGoyuUOwTw

 

[mkrnhr]

I tend to think that the sharp increase of witnesses is part of the phenomenon, especially if we consider these fireballs as messages of some sort. If one argues that people tend more attention to fireballs after the Russian meteor in February 2013, that means that meteors are increasingly part of the global consciousness of people. However, it doesn't explain alone the almost exponential increase during the years before Chelyabinsk. Both aspects (increase of fireball entries + increase fireball awareness) are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Deleted member 8431]

Thanks for the charts indeed Pashalis! Very well done!

It is very interesting to see the actual raw data (reports). The difference with last year is staggering.

 

[Niall]

I tend to think that the sharp increase of witnesses is part of the phenomenon, especially if we consider these fireballs as messages of some sort. If one argues that people tend more attention to fireballs after the Russian meteor in February 2013, that means that meteors are increasingly part of the global consciousness of people. However, it doesn't explain alone the almost exponential increase during the years before Chelyabinsk. Both aspects (increase of fireball entries + increase fireball awareness) are not mutually exclusive.

Another factor to consider is that the atmosphere may not be defending us from fireballs as effectively as before, so they're reaching lower to the ground, generating more audible booms, and catching more people's attention.

Pierre gives a possible explanation for this in his upcoming book:

Another feature of the electric model we’ve looked at is how Nemesis-induced grounding of the Sun weakens the electric field between the Earth’s surface and its ionosphere. This electric field, through the electric constraint it exerts on incoming meteors, acts as a protective shield:

If a body having a different electrical potential (voltage) penetrates the double layer boundary and moves into the plasmasphere surrounding a planet, charges will flow to try to cancel the voltage difference. Electrical discharges will occur. Thus, if any other body, such as a large meteor, asteroid, or comet should come close enough to Earth to penetrate our plasma sheath, violent electric discharges would occur between the two bodies. It would, of course, be unfortunate to be standing on Earth's surface at the point of origin (or reception) of such a mega-lightning discharge. But the massive discharge itself might either deflect the intruding body or break it up and thus protect Earth from a collision. Such large-amplitude arcs would undoubtedly cause scarring on the surface of both bodies. A very small intruder would be broken up by the discharge. It is likely that this is what happened to comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 as it entered Jupiter’s giant plasmasphere a few years ago. [Thornhill, W. & Talbott, D. The Electric Universe, pp. 44-45]

Because of the reduced solar activity, comets entering the solar system are subjected to a lesser electric field, less electric stress and are therefore less likely to fragment or/ disintegrate.

If Nemesis’s comet swarm was approaching, the probability of encountering more and bigger asteroids should increase, and, because of the weakened heliospheric and atmospheric electric field, the probability increases that more of them may approach closer to the Earth’s surface and trigger overhead explosions or even ground impacts.

In this electric model, we thus see Nemesis and its cometary swarm subjecting our planet to the threat of cometary bombardments while simultaneously neutralizing the very defense mechanism our planet possesses against this threat.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Thanks for all the new information. The evidence keeps increasing.

 

[Gawan]

Eventually like a greeting from the universe ;). On the January 1. Asteroid 2014 AA was discovered and hit the atmosphere on the 2.

"The energy is very hard to estimate with much accuracy — the signals are all weak and buried in noise," Brown explains. And yet, he adds, we're lucky that the event happened just after local midnight, when winds are calmest. "Had this occurred in the middle of the day I doubt we would see any signals at all," he says.

Brown's rough guess is that the impact energy was equivalent to the explosive power of 500 to 1,000 tons of TNT — which, though powerful in human terms, implies the object was no bigger than a small car. "It was no Chelyabinsk," he says.

So 2014 AA was too small to reach the ground intact. But it must have created one heck of a fireball! The skies over the Atlantic were relatively clear last night. Alas, a search of ship- and plane-tracking websites turned up no vessels in that area — it seems that no one was positioned to witness 2014 AA's demise.

"I'm not aware of any visual sightings," says William Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, Alabama. "Looks like it was too far away from human eyes."

The impact occurred a little after 3h UT, Brown says. That's only about 22 hours after Kowalski's initial report to the MPC, and it's giving me déjà vu all over again. It's been just five years since another small asteroid called 2008 TC3 struck Earth over Sudan just 19 hours after its discovery by the same telescope.

[...]

_http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/Small-Asteroid-2014-AA-Hits-Earth-238481431.html

http://www.sott.net/article/271263-Small-asteroid-2014-AA-hit-the-Earths-atmosphere

 

[c.a.]

Eventually like a greeting from the universe ;). On the January 1. Asteroid 2014 AA was discovered and hit the atmosphere on the 2.

"The energy is very hard to estimate with much accuracy — the signals are all weak and buried in noise," Brown explains. And yet, he adds, we're lucky that the event happened just after local midnight, when winds are calmest. "Had this occurred in the middle of the day I doubt we would see any signals at all," he says.

Brown's rough guess is that the impact energy was equivalent to the explosive power of 500 to 1,000 tons of TNT — which, though powerful in human terms, implies the object was no bigger than a small car. "It was no Chelyabinsk," he says.

So 2014 AA was too small to reach the ground intact. But it must have created one heck of a fireball! The skies over the Atlantic were relatively clear last night. Alas, a search of ship- and plane-tracking websites turned up no vessels in that area — it seems that no one was positioned to witness 2014 AA's demise.

"I'm not aware of any visual sightings," says William Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, Alabama. "Looks like it was too far away from human eyes."

The impact occurred a little after 3h UT, Brown says. That's only about 22 hours after Kowalski's initial report to the MPC, and it's giving me déjà vu all over again. It's been just five years since another small asteroid called 2008 TC3 struck Earth over Sudan just 19 hours after its discovery by the same telescope.

[...]

_http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/Small-Asteroid-2014-AA-Hits-Earth-238481431.html

http://www.sott.net/article/271263-Small-asteroid-2014-AA-hit-the-Earths-atmosphere

I think that one was close ???????????????
_orbit.psi.edu/~tricaric/2014AA.html

This animations shows the Earth as observed from the asteroid 2014 AA, using the nominal orbit solution. In the background are visible the Sun and the Moon. The asteroid approaches the Earth from the night side, and enters Earth's shadow cone at approximately 01:45 UT of January 2, approximately 40 minutes before entering the Earth's atmosphere.

There are large uncertainties over the time and location of the atmospheric entry of this asteroid, because only 7 observations were made while the asteroid was still visible. Calculations by Bill Gray show that it could have entered the atmosphere between Africa and Central America.

The reason for the uncertainty is that only a few measurements of of 2014 AA’s position were possible before it literally disappeared from view. Richard Kowalski of the Catalina Sky Survey out of Tucson, Ariz. picked up the object on New Year’s Eve in northern Orion as a tiny twinkle of 19th magnitude. At the time, the asteroid was only 300,000 miles from Earth. When it hit the atmosphere some 22 hours later, it must have created a spectacular fireball.

2014 AA was similar in size to 2008 TC3, the only other asteroid discovered and tracked before impact. That one, estimated at 13 feet across, fragmented in Earth’s atmosphere over the Nubian Desert in Sudan on October 7, 2008.

Later, dozens of fragments with a total weight of 8.7 pounds (3.95 kg) were recovered as the Almahata Sitta meteorite.

Right now, signals from the global network of infrasound stations are being analyzed to see if they can be correlated with an impact. There are no visual sightings of the asteroid … Perhaps a surveillance satellite snagged it or we’ll hear of a airplane pilot seeing something. Stay tuned!

UPDATE Jan. 3: Three weak infrasound signals have been detected pointing to an impact near 12 degrees north, 40 degrees west latitude about 1,900 miles (3,000 km) east of Caracas, Venezuela in the Atlantic Ocean.

CTBTO
_www.ctbto.org/verification-regime/monitoring-technologies-how-they-work/infrasound-monitoring/
Russian Fireball Largest Ever Detected by CTBTO's Infrasound Sensors
_www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-8ij80vs1E

Infrasonic waves from the meteor that broke up over Russia's Ural mountains last week were the largest ever recorded by the CTBTO's International Monitoring System. Infrasound is low frequency sound with a range of less than 10 Hz. The blast was detected by 17 infrasound stations in the CTBTO's network, which tracks atomic blasts across the planet. Listen to the audio files of the infrasound recording after it has been filtered and the signal accelerated. Read more:http://www.ctbto.org/press-centre/pre.

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Interesting comment from the peanut gallery.
Phil Naranjo via Google+10 months ago (edited)

Audio frequencies lower than 20 Hz (the lower range of human hearing) are called infrasound. Infrasound is used in horror movies to illicit a sense of uneasiness.