Fireballs
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Second large meteorite found following massive fireball over Korea

Jeyup S. Kwaak
The Wall Street Journal
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:12 UTC
Meteroite
© ReutersReporters gather around a piece of a meteorite, which according to local authorities and scientists, was lifted from the bottom of the Chebarkul Lake, placed on display in a local museum in Chelyabinsk, October 18, 2013.
South Korean media outlets are abuzz this week with the news of the discovery of a possible meteorite, likening the rock to a jackpot worth millions of dollars.

Scientists on Tuesday told the national media the rock found a day earlier in provincial city of Jinju, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) southeast of Seoul, is likely to be a meteorite, assuming it wasn't placed there.

The condition of the surroundings, a vegetable farm on relatively flat land, meant the 9.5-kilogram (20.9-pound) rock was unlikely to have fallen from somewhere nearby, they said. They added that the rock's surface had signs of burning, which takes place when an space object enters the atmosphere.

Comment: See also:

Massive fireball captured on hundreds of cameras across Korea, enormous meteorite crashes into greenhouse, 9 March 2014

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Fireball 2

Emergency services called to reports of crashing fireball - UK, 10 March


EADT24, UK
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 00:51 UTC
Fire Vehicles
© EADT24, UKNorfolk Fire and Rescue Service and Norfolk Police were called just after 2pm with reports of the sighting from a driver on the A1065.

Emergency services have been called to the Thetford area after a member of the public reported seeing a "fireball" in the sky which then crashed to the ground.

Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service and Norfolk Police were called just after 2pm with reports of the sighting from a driver on the A1065.

Sam Beazley, 23, from Norfolk, said he and his mother, Jill Payne, had seen the object in the sky at around 1.45pm in between Mundford and Thetford as they travelled southbound towards the Fiveways roundabout.

"I was asleep and my mum woke me up to point out this object on fire to the left of us over Thetford Forest.

"At first she thought it must have been a flare but it was far too large and was actually changing direction in the sky, rather than just falling. It looked like it might have been being controlled somehow.

"We lost sight of it when it went below the treeline - it was just bizarre," he said.
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Massive fireball captured on hundreds of cameras across Korea, enormous meteorite crashes into greenhouse, 9 March 2014


Chosun.com
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 00:41 UTC
A bright shining object in the skies captivated observers in Suwon on Sunday night. Experts say it was probably a shooting star.
Fireball
© News 1 A shining object (in circle) is captured by an in-car camera system in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province on Sunday.
The object blazed across the night sky for some moments before crashing to earth.

Several videos capturing the scene from in-car systems were posted on social networking sites.

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Comment: Reports from eyewitnesses:
9 March 2014 - Justin Solomon, Osan AB, South Korea
UTC-+9:00 Soeul/20:45, 8:45pm
15 seconds duration. Moving in a south-easterly direction. Green in color, as bright as a full moon. No fragmentation, but it looked wicked!
9 March 2014 - Kellee Hayang, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea
20:04 KST, GMT+9
10-15 seconds duration. Northwest to Southeast direction, I was facing East. White fireball with immediately orange tail and which was green at the end. Upon entering Earth's atmosphere it created a brilliant light over the town, lighting up the night sky. It started off as a tiny, white light, and as it closer it got bigger and brighter and was pure, white light. It remained intact until it burnt out, from what I could see. It appeared to get reasonably close to crashing to the ground. I was observing from the 3rd floor of an apartment building and had it not burnt out, it was within a second of dropping out of view due to a four-storey apartment across the road in front of me. It was travelling at extremely high speed.


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Fireball 5

Did you hear the loud boom over Illinois?

Akilah Davis
KWQC
Mon, 10 Mar 2014 12:54 UTC
Image
File photo
Viewers have called, emailed and sent Facebook messages to our newsroom questioning where this boom noise came from. TV-6 spoke with people on both sides of the river--from Davenport to Rock Island. We don't know much about where the noise came from, but some of you say you heard it.

"I heard a really loud boom," said Chris Rice.

"I heard a rumble," said Tanisha Douglas.

" I heard a pretty big explosion," said Logan Edwards.

A noise so loud that some of you say it startled you and caused your homes and businesses to shake.

"I expected to see a mushroom cloud when I went out there off in the distance," said Rice.

We contacted the police and fire departments, airport, the Rock Island Arsenal and even spoke with our meteorologist about what it could be, but no one knows.

"I haven't heard anything that loud since leaving Iraq in 2007," said Edwards.

"It sounded like something really big on the street. Like something rolling by on the street and then there was a rumble, too," said Douglas

Whether the noise was a rumble, explosion or boom, some of you tell us, this isn't the first time you've heard it.

"On January 14th I heard the sound," said Rice. "I'm used to hearing really loud sounds because I live near the river. I hear trains, barges. I've always lived near the arsenal. I hear all types of sounds, but this one was way louder."

The mystery remains unsolved....

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Irish skies lit up by 'extremely bright' fireball


The Irish Times
Mon, 10 Mar 2014 12:02 UTC
Chelyabinsk Fireball
© www.chelyabinsk.ru/ReutersA fireball which burned up over Russia last February generated shockwaves which circled the globe twice.
An 'extremely bright fireball' was seen streaking across Irish skies on Saturday night before breaking up, Astronomy Ireland has said.

The organisation received "lots of reports" of sightings of the meteor which lit up the sky shortly after 9.30pm.

"Fireballs are seen quite rarely, but when they appear on a clear evening when people are travelling from work we often get inundated with reports," said astronomy Ireland chairman David Moore.

Reports from the public help to "determine the fireball's path through the sky and find out if it is likely to have ended up on land or in the sea," Mr Moore said.

Fireballs are very bright meteors caused by larger particles of debris from space, Astronomy Ireland said. They can seem close but occur "very high up in the atmosphere, approximately 70km and above", it said.
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Massive new asteroid 2014 CU13 to pass Earth tonight

Tariq Malik
Space.com
Sun, 09 Mar 2014 11:12 UTC
2014 CU13
© Slooh Community ObservatoryThis graphic depicts the path of asteroid 2014 CU13 during its distant flyby of Earth on March 9, 2014. The Slooh online community observatory hopes to track the asteroid to help astronomers better refine the newfound asteroid's orbit.
An asteroid at least the size of a 60-story building will make a distant flyby of Earth this week, and you watch astronomers track the space rock tonight (March 9) in a live webcast, weather permitting. The asteroid poses no threat to Earth.

The online Slooh community observatory will host the free webcast at 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT) to track asteroid 2014 CU13, a space rock about 623 feet (190 meters) wide discovered on Feb. 11 that will pass Earth at a range of about eight times the distance between Earth and the moon on Tuesday (March 11). The average Earth-moon distance is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers), so eight lunar distances is about 1.9 million miles (3 million km).

You can watch the asteroid webcast live on the Slooh website, with streaming views from Slooh's remotely operated telescope in the Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa. You can watch the asteroid webcast live on Space.com here.
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Dinosaur-killing asteroid triggered lethal acid rain

Becky Oskin
LiveScience
Sun, 09 Mar 2014 13:00 UTC
Impact Event
© NASAArtist's illustration of an asteroid hitting Earth 65 million years ago.
The oceans soured into a deadly sulfuric-acid stew after the huge asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, a new study suggests.

Eighty percent of the planet's species died off at the end of the Cretaceous Period 65.5 million years ago, including most marine life in the upper ocean, as well as swimmers and drifters in lakes and rivers. Scientists blame this mass extinction on the asteroid or comet impact that created the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico.

A new model of the disaster finds that the impact would have inundated Earth's atmosphere with sulfur trioxide, from sulfate-rich marine rocks called anhydrite vaporized by the blast. Once in the air, the sulfur would have rapidly transformed into sulfuric acid, generating massive amounts of acid rain within a few days of the impact, according to the study, published today (March 9) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The model helps explain why most deep-sea marine life survived the mass extinction while surface dwellers disappeared from the fossil record, the researchers said. The intense acid rainfall only spiked the upper surface of the ocean with sulfuric acid, leaving the deeper waters as a refuge. The model could also account for another extinction mystery: the so-called fern spike, revealed by a massive increase in fossil fern pollen just after the impact. Ferns are one of the few plants that tolerate ground saturated in acidic water, the researchers said.
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Air France 447: The computer crash


Times Online
Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:36 UTC
As the first bodies from Air France 447 are found, investigators suspect a terrifying mix of weather and technological weakness was responsible
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Galaxy

Heaven and Earth: Unusual natural events and strange phenomena from around the world in February/March 2014

Last Messages
YouTube
Fri, 07 Mar 2014 10:07 UTC
Image
© Martin Rietze/National
This video compiles footages of strange phenomena of all kinds, including awesome natural events or beautiful phenomena from around the world in the last few weeks. Just a small sample of what we've seen already this year!

In the past month or so we have seen: Unusual solar activity including an X class flare - Aurora Borealis much further south than usual, including southern UK - Huge waves off coast of California, Brazil, UK - England battered by record storms, floods and sinkholes - Severe drought in California, followed by extreme storms and floods - US cities in the East frozen still - Strange skies over Europe - Ecuador Tungurahua volcano erupts - Strange 'hailstone' falls over Nevada - Weird pulsating orange Earth phenomena melts ice and boils water - Amazing sinkhole in the Corvette Museum - New York sinkhole swallows car - Popocatelpetl Volcano, Mexico eruptions - Sakurajima, Japan spectacular volcanic eruption - Large fireball over Maine, USA - Huge eruption from Volcano Pacaya in Guatemala
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Fireball

Mysterious blast lights up sky over Eastern Siberia


RIA Novosti
Thu, 06 Mar 2014 19:07 UTC

Moscow - An explosion of unclear origin illuminated the sky over eastern Siberia on Thursday morning, leaving frightened locals to speculate about an asteroid or malfunctioning rocketry, media reports said.

The blast, for which no official explanation has been offered, was witnessed by the population of the Kyrgydai village in Russia's Yakutia region, the Vesti14.ru news website said.

Two extremely grainy videos from surveillance cameras documenting the alleged blast - or at least a bright flash in the sky - are available on YouTube.

Reports said some debris apparently plummeted into the taiga after the explosion, but nothing had been recovered by the time of this article's publication.
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