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Scientists discover radio emissions from fireballs

Radio Emissions
© Phys OrgThese images show the sky above the first LWA station. Each image shows the full sky, down to the horizon at the image's edge.
Streaking across the sky at more than 50 kilometers per second at atmospheric heights of more than a 90 kilometers high, researchers using the first station of University of New Mexico's Long Wavelength Array (LWA) saw something new that had never been seen before; something that could hold a treasure trove of new information in the world of physics.

The first station of the LWA, known as LWA1, is a unique telescope that consists of a collection of 256 dipoles combined into one massive array with a collective-area of a 100-meter dish. The LWA1, is a highly sensitive telescope that can create images of the entire sky. It allows researchers to keep eyes on the whole sky day and night, probing a relatively unexplored region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Within six months of turning LWA1 on, UNM Department of Physics Professor Greg Taylor and his team got the all sky imaging up and running. Shortly thereafter, they started to search for transients, brief pulses of radio waves coming from the sky. Ken Obenberger, a UNM graduate student, and colleagues searched for transients in more than 11,000 hours of all-sky images from the LWA at frequencies between 25 and 75 MHz. In this data he identified 49 long (30 seconds or longer) transients.

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Scientists worry an asteroid impact will someday be mistaken for an act of war

The graph below, titled "Known Near-Earth Asteroids," is simultaneously both terrifying and a little bit comforting. Problem is, the Y-axis on a hypothetical graph titled "Unknown Near-Earth Asteroids" would definitely extend much, much higher. Either way, we don't have a good deal of knowledge about what to do about potentially Earth-threatening asteroids, anyway.

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© BulletinOfTheAtomic @BulletinAtomic
That much was clear back in February of last year, when a meteor struck Chelyabinsk, Russia. The meteor came, as far as NASA and other groups that track such things are concerned, from nowhere.

The fear now is that a Chelyabinsk-sized asteroid could hit a city in a war-torn or politically tense area, which would be the powder keg necessary to throw a whole region into turmoil. It may seem like a longshot, and it may seem like something not worth worrying about, but John Remo, a Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher would beg to differ. Remo just published a paper in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that warns that an asteroid impact could easily be seen as an act of war.

Comment: Looked at from another angle: what if, given the reality of increased cometary material in near-space and the atmosphere, the Powers That Be deliberately orchestrate wars to mask the cosmic threat? In other words, an aggressive regime might intentionally conflate a celestial object with an inter-continental ballistic missile... It's much easier to retain control so long as the little people are scared of man-made wars - incoming comets would see the powerful lose their power altogether.

The reader may enjoy Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection: The Secret History of the World - Book 3 - "a ground-breaking attempt to re-connect modern science with ancient understanding that the human mind and states of collective human experience can influence cosmic and earthly phenomena."


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Meteor fireball startles the population of Chihuahua, Mexico

meteoro México
© El Heraldo de Chihuahua
Last Saturday night, at 9 pm, a fireball turned the night sky into day across several towns in Chihuahua, Mexico. Eyewitnesses reported having seen the object burst into small pieces and disintegrate after having traveled for a few minutes, leaving a white, yellow, orange and green trail on its path.

In Parral, three explosions were first heard, and several calls were made to the authorities inquiring about their origin. At the same time, in San José de los Bailón, eyewitnesses stated that they had seen a fireball crossing the sky "as if if had been fireworks, except that it was travelling in a downward trajectory!".

At the time of the sighting, a primary school was celebrating a graduation, and the children and parents present gave accounts of the "magnificent light show" they had witnessed.

In yet another town, Providencia, a family observed the phenomenon. José Luis Aguirre said that "it was like a shooting star, but brighter, and we saw this extremely bright light blaze across the sky from one end to the other. It was amazing."

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Police camera films meteor fireball over West Midlands, UK

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A camera fitted to a West Midlands Police car films the moment a bright meteor shoots through the night sky

Police car cameras are usually used to catch images of suspects, but in the early hours of Monday morning West Midlands Police captured a meteor fireball shooting across the sky.

The video clip was taken from a traffic car while it was travelling towards Junction 4 of the M42 at Shirley just after 3am.

The meteor is believed to have broken into pieces as it entered the Earth's atmosphere and was visible across Wales and the west of England.


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'Unique' meteorite likely came from long-dead asteroid

Meteorite_1
© Discovery News
A well-known meteorite that was the first to be tracked by ground-based cameras as it blasted through the Earths atmosphere and quickly recovered at its Australian fall site has been identified as a geological oddity.

The Bunburra Rockhole meteorite was recovered from the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia in 2007 and, after recent isotopic tests, its basaltic composition started a cosmic forensics investigation that has led researchers to believe it originated from an asteroid that no longer exists.

"This (meteorite) has a particular composition - which makes us think that it comes from a different body that has not been sampled before," said geochronologist and geochemist Fred Jourdan, associate professor at Curtin University, Perth. Jourdan and his team's work has been accepted for publication in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.

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Kola fireball meteorites found in Russia

Kola Fireball
© Asko Aikkila/Finnish Fireball NetworkAmateur astronomer and physics teacher Asko Aikkila caught this image of the Kola fireball on videotape in Kuusamo, Finland on April 19, 2014. The picture has been processed to enhance the details.
A spectacular fireball that crackled across the sky near the Russia-Finnish border on April 19th this year left more than a bright flash. A team of meteor researchers from Finland, Russia and the Czech Republic scoured the predicted impact zone and recently discovered extraterrestrial booty.

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Explosive Bolide over Brasília, Brazil

Posted to YouTube by Carlos Bella


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New kind of meteorite found

Meteor Shower
© argus/ShutterstockIllustration of a meteor shower.
For 50 years, scientists have wondered what annihilated the ancestor of L-chondrites, the roof-smashing, head-bonking meteorites that frequently pummel Earth.

Now, a new kind of meteorite discovered in a southern Sweden limestone quarry may finally solve the mystery, scientists report. The strange new rock may be the missing "other half" from one of the biggest interstellar collisions in a billion years.

"Something we didn't really know about before was flying around and crashed into the L-chondrites," said study co-author Gary Huss of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The space rock is a 470-million-year-old fossil meteorite first spotted three years ago by workers at Sweden's Thorsberg quarry, where stonecutters have an expert eye for extraterrestrial objects. Quarriers have plucked 101 fossil meteorites from the pit's ancient pink limestone in the last two decades. [Photos: New Kind of Meteorite Found in Sweden]

Researchers have nicknamed the new meteorite the "mysterious object" until its formal name is approved, said lead study author Birger Schmitz, of Lund University in Sweden and Chicago's Field Museum. It will likely be named for a nearby church, the Österplana, he said.

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June 6 Ontario, Canada Fireball 'bright as Moon'


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Initial Meteor Sighting Report


06JUN2014 Edsel Burlington, Ontario, Canada 22:05:00 3-4 secs n light yellow bright as moon yes it had one large piece and 1 small piece trailing behind

06JUN2014 Donald Johnston Georgetown, Ontario, Canada 10:30? 2-4 secs slightly south west to slightly north east blue / white / amber brighter then moon yes broke apart and stopped emitting light before horizon.

06JUN2014 Doug Stoney Creek, Canada 2205 1 sec max S-N I was facing north Super Bright lime Green popsicle colour faint sound like a bunson burner like a roman candle firework super bright not that I could see went down into lake ontario about 10miles north of me about 1/3 of the way accross the lake to Toronto. Was about 10 times the size of an airplane at that distance

MBIQ Data Set- Toronto, Ontario arrived from google.ca on "Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News: The Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News 06JUN2014" by searching for june 6 2014 meteorite.
11:30:38 -- 10 minutes ago

All 8 meteor sighting reports can be seen here

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June 5 "Huge' Fireball seen in at least 5 states - likely meteorites fell in Wyoming

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Initial Report


05JUN/2014 Matt Bellvue, CO 9:21pm MST 8-10? S to N, Facing East, R to L white, red hue at peak Brighter than Venus. large trail but no frags observed very flat trajectory. Tried for photo, too quick.

05JUN/2014 Ben Weeks Livermore Colorado USA 21:22 - 9:22 pm MT 3 seconds? east to west I was loking north Huge Fireball falling star, largest I have ever seen by far, maybe ten percent of the size of the full moon relative to my perspective. I am in lnorth east Colorado 30 miles from Wyoming it was north of me traveling east to west Very very bright the size and the distint fireball surrounding were nothing like I have ever seen and I am 50+. I could see the large object (bolide?) and the gren fire swirling around it!The object was actually darker the fireball bright as the moon. I have never seen the swirls of the fireball before or anything this big. No fragmentation Incredible. I will never forget it.

05JUNE2014 Chris Perry Loveland 2224 MT Pm 5-7 seconds right/left northwest right to left northeast pink/blue no sound moon none observed none

05JUN2014 Dane Andersen Sioux Falls, SD, USA 10:00PM (UTC-06:00 15 sec SE-NW facing West Orange sparkling tail, no sound About the same as the moon. Yes, there was a tail. This is my first supposed meteor sighting, so I hope I'm not way off. I was awestruck, so I had to go somewhere to learn more. I haven't seen anything quite like it before, with its particular size, speed, distance, and appearance. Educate me if I'm full of shit!