© SMART Project (screen capture)
SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
FireballsS
© NASANASA image of a fireball from a past meteor shower.
OK, so first, off: Don't panic! As impacts go, this was pretty small*. After all, you didn't even hear about until weeks after it occurred. Events this size aren't too big a concern. Had it happened over a populated area it would've rattled some windows and probably terrified a lot of people, but I don't think it would've done any real damage.
For comparison, the Chelyabinsk explosion, which was strong enough to shatter windows and injure over 1000 people (due to flying glass), had an equivalent yield of 500,000 tons of TNT, 40 times the energy of this more recent impact.
The event was reported on the NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Fireball page, which lists some of the brightest such things.
© SMART Project (screen capture)
© YouTube Screen Capture
The video, posted to YouTube (see below) by Overwatch Security, features body camera footage filmed by a worker for the firm as he walked on a Victoria beach on a stormy day.
The man faces out toward the water as the suspected meteor lights up the sky and streaks down toward the water.
The lights are quickly followed by the sound of the object passing through the air toward the water.
The video's time-stamp indicates it was filmed just after 8 p.m. Jan. 27.
Cool video I captured with my dashcam of a really close meteor. I witnessed a similar incident higher up in the sky 2 days before this... Interesting happening, glad I was driving by at the right moment. This was on 183 Westbound in the Euless area.
A portion of a ‘heat map’ – showing location of witnesses or observers, and ground trajectory – of January 24, 2016, daylight meteor via the American Meteor Society.
© MikesAstroPhotos.com.Meteorite
Mike Hankey, Larry Atkins, Laura Atkins, Brendan Fallon and Josh Adkins searched for days in pine forests and swamplands across Florida in search of the space rock. The zone where the meteorites were found matched up perfectly with the trajectory that the meteor took during the January 24th fireball event. According to the American Meteor Society, there are now almost 130 reports that a bright meteor streaked over the southeast U.S. on January 24th and 10:25 A.M. ET.
© Brendan FallonJosh Adkins holds up an 800-gram meteorite – a chunk of rock from space – associated with the January 24, 2016 daylight meteor over the U.S. Southeast.
© NASA / Reuters
A recent study by researchers at the University of Manchester posits the theory that a "hidden reserve" of meteorites lies between 10 and 50cm beneath the icy surface.
If discoverable, these rocks - which were originally part of large planets which subsequently broke apart - could help scientists in their understanding of the formation of the solar system.
Einstein's ripples in the fabric of spacetime have just been detected, 100 years on https://t.co/kFswoOMaVG pic.twitter.com/vERfthrSVm
— RT UK (@RTUKnews) February 11, 2016
© YouReporterMany witnesses saw a meteorite fall over northern Italy on Wednesday evening.
The fireball left a trail of vapour hanging in the sky for minutes.
Not long after the unusual event, pictures of bright flashes, vapour trails and eyewitness reports started to emerge on social media, with users suggesting they had witnessed a meteorite falling to earth.
The unidentified flying object lit up skies over northern Italy, travelling east to west from Genoa to Venice at around 6.19pm.
Sightings of the object were also reported from as far away as southern France and Switzerland.
La Repubblica reported a spike in phone calls made to Italy's fire brigade to report the phenomenon.
A photo of the vapour trail, captured on a road outside Genoa, was uploaded to the Italian citizen journalism website, YouReporter.
© Youtube/MrMBB333 (screen capture)
While many wondered whether the phenomenon was linked to some kind of military exercise and others panicked that planes were on fire, the fire balls are believed to have been caused by a meteorite shower.
Social networks lit up at around 6.20pm on Wednesday after hundreds of people caught sight of a fire ball passing through the sky.
"You're never going to believe me but I saw a meteorite, something on fire falling from the sky! "F**king hell I 'm in shock," said one eyewitness.
The regional newspaper Dauphiné Libéré said hundreds of eye-witnesses had contacted them from right across southern France.
Readers described seeing a "green ball with a trail" or a "white ball that exploded followed by a long trail of fire."
One resident in the Alps told Le Parisien newspaper the meteorite "passed pretty low and horizontally and was a big ball of green fire."
Comment: The American Meteor Society (AMS) has received 55 reports about a fireball seen over South France and Switzerland on 17th February 2016.
NASA space data supports citizens' observations that - meteor fireball activity is increasing dramatically!
For more information read: Comets and the Horns of Moses by Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection: The Secret History of the World - Book 3 by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
© NASANASA image of a fireball from a past meteor shower.
The fireball was seen from New Jersey and Delaware into southern Virginia around 7:10 p.m. People reported it as green and bright.
It was the second fireball seen in recent weeks in the Mid-Atlantic skies. On Jan. 30, hundreds of people in the D.C. area reported seeing a streaking meteor, and it was even captured on dash cam.
According to the American Meteor Society, fireballs are very bright meteors, about as bright as Venus in the morning and evening skies.
About 10 to 15 meteorites fall to Earth each day, but sightings are rare since streaking fireballs often fall over the ocean, or during daylight hours when they can't be seen.
Comment: Certainly, this is not the first time this has happened in this area. We can say with some certainty that a similar space rock in the very same area, was the cause of the destruction of Air France Flight 447 on June 1st 2009, as reported by Sott.net
Notice also that this chunk of space rock fell on the same day that Copenhagen had a massive overhead meteor explosion and a bit earlier in the day a meteorite killed one and injured three, in India!