Fireballs
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Fireball

Fireball spotted over Peru (VIDEO)

Fireball
© YouTube
Here at Outer Places, we pride ourselves in being both believers and skeptics in equal proportion.

When Peruvian residents saw a giant fireball careening through the sky before crashing in southeastern Peru earlier this week, they were understandably shaken. And though the Peruvian air force has since explained the event as the remains of a satellite, they were understandably skeptical.

What makes this more than your standard, cut and dry gap between civilian and government knowledge? The fact that we've seen personal footage of the fireball, too. A gentleman sent us in a video of the fireball, captured on his cell phone, that shows the object moving in inexplicable ways, far different than any falling object moves as it plummets to the ground. It's easy to understand why some are already racing to claim this is genuine evidence of an alien spacecraft.


Comment: We've seen a few video angles of this event. There wasn't anything unusual about its trajectory or rate of falling.


Meteorologist Alejandro Fonesca, from the Universidade Federal do Acre, confirmed that there were no meteorites scheduled to fall in the area, and thinks that the fireball was either an old satellite or other human-made space litter.


Comment: Meteorites are never 'scheduled' to fall. Meteor showers happen like clockwork, though there's variability with those too. Meteorites are the result of large meteors exploding/disintegrating in the upper atmosphere, and they're not usually part of the 'scheduled' showers.


Fireball

Mysterious satellite plummets to Earth in fireball near Bolivian border (PHOTOS)

Satellite
© Peruvian Air Force / AFP
A mysterious fireball spotted over Peru on Saturday turned out to be part of an old satellite falling to Earth.

The Peruvian Air Force was quick to reveal the source of the flames after the round object was found by locals near Larancahuani in the Puno region near the Bolivian border, La Nacion reports.

Locals alerted the Peruvian Air Force (FAP), which then released images of the debris to stop any theories about UFOs gaining traction. "According to the first analysis, it would be a fuel tank of a disused satellite," Commander Pedro Palza of the FAP's Center told AFP, La Nacion reports.

Meteor

Mysterious boom heard in central Michigan attributed to tannerite

Mystery boom
© The Scottish Sun
Sometime after 6 p.m. Saturday, dozens of mid-Michigan residents took to social media to ask the question: Did anyone else hear that?

A loud blast heard or felt from south of Shepherd to north of Clare and from Rosebush to Coleman was most likely caused by an exploding firearms target, Isabella County Sheriff Michael Main said.

Central dispatch took one report of a loud boom from the 4000 block of East Coleman Road just before 6:30 p.m. and while a check of the area yielded no definitive results, Main said it was most likely a Tannerite target.

"We get that type of complaint from time to time, it sounds like an explosion or Dynamite," Main said.

Tannerite is the brand name of a type of shooting target that explodes when hit by an object traveling at a high velocity, like a bullet.

Fireball 2

Meteor fireball streaks across skies of southern Spain, shines brighter than the moon (VIDEO)

meteor fireball southern spain January 29 2018
This amazing fireball, brighter than the Moon, was recorded over the South of Spain on 29 Jan. 2018, at 6:47 local time (5:47 UT). The event began at an altitude of 101 km over the province of Jaen, and ended at a height of about 41 km over the province of Albacete. According to the preliminary analysis performed by Prof. Jose M. Madiedo, the event was produced by a rock from an asteroid.

Comment: For more information on the increase in fireball events, see: Michigan Meteor Event: Fireball Numbers Increased Again in 2017

And a few others that happened just this month:


Fireball 5

Scientists: Bright meteor fireball near Grand Bend, Ontario likely dropped meteorites

Fireball over southern Ontario
© Western University
Western University scientists say a bright fireball event in Grand Bend likely dropped meteorites in the area.

A network of cameras directed by Western University observed a bright fireball across southern Ontario at 7:23 p.m. on Wednesday.

Analysis of the video data by Western scientists suggests that fragments of the meteor are likely to have made it to the ground between the communities of Saint Joseph and Crediton.

Western's Physics and Astronomy Department runs a camera network that constantly monitors the sky for meteors.

Attention

Loud, mystery boom rattles residents in southern Maine

Loud boom heard in Kennebunk, Maine
© visitthekennebunks.com
Residents in parts of Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Arundel were left startled and baffled earlier this week when what was described as a loud boom was heard and felt across the area on two occasions, with no one able to pinpoint the cause.

Word of the mystery boom spread across Facebook Monday evening around 9 p.m. and again Wednesday around the same time.

People took to social media asking "Did anyone hear that? What was it?" Speculation ranged from thunder snow to a sonic boom, or a blown electrical transformer.

"I can't believe it was thunder. This was felt and heard from Cape Porpoise to Waterboro. Then two series of popping noises like semi-automatic gun fire," Kennebunk resident Wendy Lank said. "It was so loud, it really made me uneasy."

Fireball

'Meteor' car commercial at the right time!

Meteor Commercial
© YouTube Screen shot
This commercial, which came out about a week and a half ago, has plenty to laugh about.

The joke, of course, is that this sucker is so roomy you can fit more than what you'd first grab fleeing your home if, says, a meteor was about to strike.

The secondary joke is that Americans have become so materialistic that they'd go back for seconds and thirds if they felt they could.

What makes it funniest, though, is it must have turned a few heads given the way a giant fireball streaked across the Michigan sky last week.

Fireball

Bright meteor fireball over the US Midwest seen as far south as Alabama

Fireball over the Midwest
Did you see it?

A fireball lit up the sky over Tennessee and North Alabama Thursday evening, January 18th. Dr. Bill Cooke from NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office tells us it was actually high above Missouri and still bright enough to be seen as far away as Florence, Alabama and Franklin County, Tennessee.

Meteor

Russia, Canada, Northern European countries identified as prime targets for Earth-bound meteorites

Meteor streaks over Novi Travink
© Dado Ruvic/ReutersA meteor streaks over the sky during the Perseid meteor shower at the Maculje archaeological site near Novi Travnik August 12, 2014.
Russia, Canada, and Northern European countries are the primary targets for asteroids and meteorites falling to Earth, Columbian scientists have found. But don't get packing just yet, because nowhere is really safe.

Scientists Jorge Zuluaga and Mario Sucerquia from the University of Antioquia in Medellin (Colombia), analyzed the probability of a space rock falling in different regions of the Earth using a process called "Gravitational Ray Tracing" (GRT).

The fact that the Tunguska and Chelyabinsk meteorites, over a century apart in time, were only separated by 2,300 kilometers (some 1,400 miles), led the Colombian physicists to conclude that some regions of our planet are more prone to this danger than others.

Fireball 2

SOTT Focus: Michigan Meteor Event: Fireball Numbers Increased Again in 2017

meteor fireball michigan
Still from a dash-cam video of the meteor fireball event over Michigan, 16 January 2018.
Another major meteor fireball event occurred in the US earlier this week. Shortly after 8pm on Tuesday evening, a bolide estimated to have been up to three meters in diameter blazed across southern Michigan before exploding somewhere high above Detroit. Though brief, the meteor caused a blinding light that briefly turned night into day across metropolitan Detroit, most of Michigan, and was seen as far away as Des Moines, Iowa and Toronto, Canada.

This one was a little different than the 'regular' fireball events occurring globally these days: people across southern Michigan also heard a powerful boom that arrived about three minutes after the white-out, and the event even registered as a magnitude 2.0 earthquake on local seismographs.