Fireballs
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Fireball

Fireball? Nighttime booms, house shaking, red flash in Louisana skies

Bridge in New Orleans
© travelsouthusa.com
In early December, weeks before New Year's fireworks could be considered a culprit, a pair of massive nighttime explosion sounds rattled homes and startled residents across the Carrollton area. The noise was loud enough that it sent New Orleans police officers searching for gunshot victims, but they turned up nothing — and a survey of other public agencies since then likewise leaves the source of the sounds a mystery.

The first of the loud sounds to draw widespread attention on social media was a Thursday night, Dec. 1, around 11:45 p.m. Residents heard it across the entire Carrollton area from St. Charles Avenue to South Claiborne, between Joliet and Pine, and many said it sounded like it came from the river, with sirens following.

"It was louder than I'm used to hearing a transformer sound and it seemed to reverberate for a bit," a woman who lives near Cohn and Dante posted on the Nextdoor social media network. "Really strange.It was extremely loud! And deeper sounding than the gunshots I'm (sadly) used to hearing," a resident at Panola and Cambronne replied.

The sound repeated itself again the night of Tuesday, Dec. 6, around 7 p.m. — early enough that it attracted even wider attention. In that second case, a number of residents reported that their homes shook, and some even said they thought they saw a corresponding red flash in the sky.

Fireball

Anomalous: Three Quadrantid meteor fireballs in southern skies?

Rare Quadrantid Meteors In The Southern Skies
© Frankie Lucena Reference photo clearly showing the Southern Cross and Alpha Centauri.
The Quadrantid meteor shower is 2017's first major meteor shower and it peaks tonight. The display is virtually non-existent for observers in the Southern Hemisphere.

But Franky Lucena shot three rare Quadrantid meteors. He writes:

Comment: Also see:


Fireball 3

Meteor fireball or falling plane? Social media in Japan puzzled by mysterious fireball in the sky

mysterious fireball in Japan sky
© alexandrite1953 / Instagram
People on Japanese social media have been left puzzled by a mysterious fireball in the sky. Some think it was a meteorite or a comet, while others suggest it could have been a falling plane.

The object was reportedly seen near the city of Hakodate on Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, at 4:30pm local time (07:30 GMT), people on Twitter wrote.

Fireball 2

Meteor? Residents in Northern Alberta, Canada report 'strange noise', 'large blue flash' and 'explosion' in night sky

meteor fireball exploding over Alberta
© facebook/Travis Griffin (screen capture)

Did a meteor come crashing through the earth's atmosphere over northern Alberta overnight?

Peace River residents took to social media Friday to report what they had seen in the night sky shortly after midnight.

Erika Florence posted on Facebook that she was on her way home from Grande Prairie when she saw what looked like a shooting star.

"But then it got bigger and it exploded mid air and lit up the sky," she wrote.

"It was something I've never seen before."

Jackie Lee, who started the post on Peace River's General Forum page, told Postmedia that she was outside in her backyard in Peace River with her dog when she heard a "noise like I have never heard before in the air."

"It sounded close by, like maybe somewhere else in town," she wrote in a message.


Fireball 2

Meteor fireball streaks across Turrialba volcanic eruption in Costa Rica

Mteor over Turrialba Volcano
© Costa Rica Hoy / YouTube
Witnessing a volcanic eruption is a spectacular sight on its own, but one such event in Costa Rica was made even more stunning earlier this week. A meteor danced across the night sky at precisely the same time.

The shooting star traveled across the top of the Turrialba Volcano at 10:22pm local time on Tuesday night, just as the volcano was erupting, according to the Costa Rica Star.

The fireball made its appearance while gliding across the sky at an estimated height of 5,000km (3,106 miles), according to Repretel TV station.


Map

Planetary 'climate change'? Satellite detects major gravitational anomaly under Antarctica

The huge and mysterious "anomaly" is thought to be lurking beneath the frozen wastes of an area called Wilkes Land. It stretches for a distance of 151 miles across and has a maximum depth of about 848 metres. Some researchers believe it is the remains of a truly massive asteroid which was more than twice the size of the Chicxulub space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs.

If this explanation is true, it could mean this killer asteroid caused the Permian - Triassic extinction event which killed 96 percent of Earth's sea creatures and up to 70 percent of the vertebrate organisms living on land.
Wilkes Land
A view of Antarctica, the frozen landmass at the south pole of our planet
However, the wilder minds of the internet have come up with their own theories, with some conspiracy theorists claiming it could be a massive UFO base or a portal to a mysterious underworld called the Hollow Earth.

This "Wilkes Land gravity anomaly" was first uncovered in 2006, when NASA satellites spotted gravitational changes which indicated the presence of a huge object sitting in the middle of a 300 mile wide impact crater.

Wilkes Land Impact Crater Site
The area known as Wilkes Land is circled in red

Comment: They're assuming that it's an ancient crater, but given that the anomaly was only recently discovered, isn't it more likely to be something new?

Some major changes appear to be going on inside the planet...

See also: 70-Mile-Long Crack Opens Up in Antarctica


Fireball

Meteor fireball disintegrates over Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua

bolide over South America
Immagine della meteora mentre si disintegra, vista martedì sera in vari paesi del l'America Centrale.
Reports on Elnuevodiario (translated by google) confirm sightings of a meteor fireball disintegrating on December 27th over Guatemala, El Salvador and parts of Nicaragua. In some areas of Guatemala people indicated that they saw up to seven flashes in the sky.

Videos of the event, which caused astonishment among the people, were widely shared on social media.


Fireball 4

Green meteor fireball streaks across West Michigan sky

green meteor fireball over Michigan
© YouTube/WOOD TV8 (screen capture)
It's is not something you expect to see on your drive home from work.

As Andrew Gunneson drove south on U.S. 131 from M-57, his dash cam caught a quick flash in the night sky. It was a meteor falling on the horizon.

What fell is technically a fireball, based on how bright it is, but it's not clear where exactly it fell or if it even reached the ground.

Fireballs form anytime space debris collides with the atmosphere. They often burn up after a few seconds, so it's not easy to track the type of debris that fell.

Gunneson described the bright light as green in person. According to the American Meteor Society, green means the material flying through the air is made up of nickel.


Comment: The American Meteor Society (AMS) received over 110 reports about a fireball seen over IL, MI, IN, Ontario and KY on Monday, December 26th 2016 around 22:52 UT.

meteor fireball over Michigan map
© AMS/Google (screen capture)



Comet 2

Incoming star Gliese 710 could spawn swarms of comets when it passes our Sun

Gliese 710
© ESOArtist’s impression of Gliese 710, a sun-like star that will travel through our Solar System’s Oort Cloud in about 1.3 million years.
For years, scientists have known that Gliese 710 will come excruciatingly close to our Solar System in about a million years. An updated analysis suggests this star will come considerably closer than we thought, during which time it's expected to spawn dangerous cometary swarms.

Gliese 710 is currently 64 light-years from Earth, but for all intents and purposes, it's heading straight for us. A new study published in the journal Astronomy and Physics projects the close encounter will happen about 1.35 million years from now, and that the star will come within 13,365 AU of our sun (where 1 AU is equal to the average distance of the Earth to the sun), or 1.2 trillion miles. At that distance, it would take light 77 days to reach the Earth.

That's obviously far, but not in cosmological terms. That distance is well within the Solar System's Oort Cloud—a large bubble of ice and rock that surrounds the sun to a distance as far as 50,000 to 200,000 AU. So while Gliese 710 is sure to avoid a direct hit with any object in the inner Solar System, it'll likely travel through the Oort Cloud. And with its tremendous gravitational influence (it's about 60 percent the size of our sun), it'll perturb the many large rocks currently sitting idle way out there in the outer reaches. This star is poised to send a shower of comets into the inner Solar System, possibly causing a serious impact event with Earth.

Fireball 2

Three meteor fireballs recorded over France in three days

meteor fireball over France 17.12.16
© YouTube/OGVT - Observatoire géophysique, Val Terbi (screen capture)
On 17th December 2016 a sporadic meteor was recorded over France by the private geophysical observatory at Montsevelier, Val Terbi in Switzerland.

Sporadic meteors are usually considered as random occurrences not associated with any particular meteor shower, such as the Geminids which have been observed this month.