© Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images
On Christmas Eve, many people in and around Toronto reported hearing a loud "boom," like something had fallen on their house.
On Christmas Eve, many people in and around Toronto reported hearing a loud "boom," like something had fallen on their house.
Loud boom in #YorkRegion around 11pm last night. Heard in #Newmarket #Aurora and #RichmondHill. #meteor? #earthquake? #sonicboom? #santa?But so far, there hasn't been an official explanation.
- Rob Jones™ (@blindedbtflash) December 25, 2013
@NebulousNikki that's what we thought too! Lots of neighbours heard it too. Can't figure out what it was... #Kingston
- Kate Kaminska (@katekaminska1) December 25, 2013
@NebulousNikki @RodSinclair1 same in Durham / Brooklin. Over 20 friends in area reporting it at 7:45, again around 11 and about midnight
- Micheline Robichaud (@SweetMinxy) December 25, 2013
Even more mysterious is that some people reported hearing booms at other times during the day as well, ranging from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Christmas morning.
Comment: A 'mocked up image', 'expert' claims that bear no resemblance to eyewitness reports, and a warning about meteor fireballs "attacking us in 2014".... what a strange news report.
What we've generally found to date is that the media is reluctant to acknowledge fireball meteor sightings at all, nevermind that their numbers are increasing all the time. But lately, there seems to be some prestidigitation, some sleight of hand, going on with the news around this topic, something which really jumped out at us in the above article.
Here we have a local UK news outlet uncritically accept the explanation provided by 'virtual astronomer' that this 'bright light in the sky' was a 'fireball meteor', despite the eyewitnesses all stating that the object was stationary, and that it reappeared in the same spot in the sky on successive nights... so, obviously, they were not seeing a 'fireball meteor'.
We wonder in what direction the eyewitnesses were facing, because it rather sounds like it could have been the planet Venus. Along with Sirius, Venus appears in the evening skies this time of year, making them seem brighter than usual.
So why then would a regular newspaper
- publish a story about a non-event with a 'mocked up image' that looks nothing like what eyewitnesses described, but which does look very similar to photos that have been taken of daytime fireballs streaking through the sky in recent years;
- suggest that "2014 is going to a bumper year for meteor attacks", thereby tacitly acknowledging that fireball meteor events are increasing worldwide, and - more importantly - priming people to expect a lot more fireball activity;
- quote an 'astronomer' who falsely claims that this non-event was a fireball meteor, yet who acknowledges that they're being reported worldwide;
- simultaneously mock the phenomenon by including the 'astronomer's' tweet that included 'Oh my God, we're all going to die' as a Twitter hashtag?
Why are the 'authorities' playing this silly game?We suspect that what's going on here is a combination of ignorant people seeing stuff and the authorities playing on their ignorance to confuse the issue.