Western "fireball" may have been small asteroid
A brilliant meteor that startled residents across parts of Idaho and northern Utah early Wednesday morning may have been a small asteroid, scientists say. It exploded in the atmosphere with a force equal to a thousand tons of TNT.
Spaceweather.com reports:
"Witnesses in Colorado, Utah, Idaho and elsewhere say the fireball "turned night into day" and "shook the ground" when it exploded just after midnight Mountain Standard Time. Researchers who are analyzing infrasound recordings of the blast say the fireball was not a Leonid. It was probably a small asteroid, now scattered in fragments across the countryside. Efforts are underway to measure the trajectory of the asteroid and guide meteorite recovery efforts."
Security camera footage of the event shows a flash that brightened the sky so much that a street light operated by a light sensor winked out for a time before the sky grew dark again.
Here's a video from local TV.
If this was a small asteroid (or a big space rock of some sort) entering the atmosphere, it would be second one in recent weeks to make news.
Comments
- Stephen Hawking: "Asteroid Impacts Biggest Threat to Intelligent Life in the Galaxy"... Stephen Hawking believes that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with
inhabited planets...
- Californian Congressman for Planet X Forsight - The Sky is Falling: the deadly threat posed by Near Earth Objects and what we can do about it By Rep. Dana Rohrabacher ...
- EXPERTS CALL FOR GLOBAL NETWORK TO PREVENT ASTEROID DISASTERS:
http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2009/06/stephen-hawking-asteroid-impacts.html
Posted by: Fred | November 20, 2009 3:34 AM
Thanks for the link to my video of the meteor.
Eran
Posted by: Eran | November 25, 2009 9:19 PM
Greenish color means copper. More likely man made.
Posted by: allen | January 12, 2010 1:46 AM