Fire in the Sky
People from Lilydale to Mt Eliza and Richmond to St Albans called about 9.45pm to say they had seen an amazing bright blue light in the sky with a long blue trail.
Glowing more than 100 times brighter than a full moon the exploding fireball may have weighed up to 200 kilograms.
The pre-dawn lightshow happened about 6:45 a.m. and could be seen from several places on Kodiak Island. Some witnesses described a light moving across the sky toward the Gulf of Alaska. Others saw an explosion and red tracers. The light was bright enough to be seen from Kodiak city and Chiniak, about 20 miles away across Chiniak Bay.
Earth has suffered many such impacts over its 4.5 billion year history. An extrapolation of lunar data suggests that there have been up to 22,000 asteroid collisions with the Earth creating craters a dozen miles in diameter or bigger. One such impact created the Chesapeake Bay, and someday another will wipe out humanity, assuming some other cataclysm hasn't claimed us first.
When a really big asteroid hits, it kills most of the life on Earth by generating a smothering cloud of toxic gases that blots out sunlight for decades. The bigger, more complex species -- like us -- tend to succumb first.
A significant cosmic event occurred when a massive meteor struck on September 15th outside the farming village of Carancas, near Lake Titicaca. The meteor created an imposing eight meter (26-foot) deep, 20 meter (65 foot) wide crater. Almost immediately the object was ruled to be a meteor and not something of terrestial origin.
The massive crater emitted strange fumes, which made over 30 villagers violently ill, with headaches and nausea. Reports on the exact number of victims ranged from 30 to "about 200." Speculations on possible "out-of-this-world" causes were rampant.
Police blocked off the crater, and the villagers were transported to hospitals.
The director of the health ministry in the Puno region, Jorge Lopez, said none of the patients was in serious condition but that they would have to undergo blood and neurological tests as a precaution in three to six months.
"I did not see the object but it was without any doubt a bolide that entered the atmosphere and disintegrated. This is very common. They are highly brilliant and can be seen even in the daylight," said Jorge Koglan of the Liga de Astronomia. According to Koglan, this would have been "interplanetary material that hit the ground head-on. It must've occurred very high up, which accounts for its visibility in various locations. The greenish hue is associated with its components."
Comment: SOTT has already covered the asteroid/comet threat in its editorial, Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction! and Laura Knight-Jadczyk shares her research on the topic in her book, The Secret History of The World and How To Get Out Alive. The question is, why are all these different news sites bringing the subject up NOW ?