Fireballs
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Question

Flaming ball falls from sky in Australia and crashes 'like a bomb'

Flaming Object
© Audience submitted: Virginia HillsFlaming object falling from the sky (bottom right of photo) seen looking east from Mount Isa about 6:30pm AEST.
Residents from across central and northern Queensland have reported seeing a huge flaming object fall from the sky.

They say what appeared to be a massive ball with a blue and orange tail hit the ground in the suburb of Kelso in Townsville around 6:30pm (AEST) last night.

Resident Kim Vega was sitting in her backyard at Kelso when she saw the moment of impact.

"It was like an explosion but without a sound," she said.

"You've just seen it was like an atomic bomb effect when it would have hit the ground and all the trees and the skies lit up."

Comment: When it comes to covering up for meteors entering the atmosphere, a falling satellite is always a good explanation. In this case, it might be, but the fact is that we live in a shooting gallery, though our scientists and governments use the media to sooth us that everything is under control, when it is not, and nobody is doing anything about it.


Target

Best of the Web: Signs of change: Extreme weather, seismic activity, and meteor fireballs in April and early May 2014

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The uptick in earthquake activity continues all along the Ring of Fire. At the center of these changes, the United States dealt with "historic flooding" which was labelled a "one-in-500-year event"!

So much more has taken place over the last month or so than this video shows. Deluges continue to hit heavily populated areas. Be prepared for large-scale disasters in your area. It has and it will continue to worsen, whether we like or not. Stay safe and thanks for watching!


Bacon

SOTT Focus: Are you prepping your diet?

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© sott.netAMS fireball reports through 2013
If you are a regular SOTT reader, you are certainly aware of the many areas that are building towards potential disaster - from environmental earth changes and overhead bombardment to growing Fascism and impending economic collapse. The good thing is that you do not need to pick one of these threats to begin preparing yourself, family and local community. The basic requirements for getting prepared apply to all these possible occurrences and more.

The prepping web community has grown in massive proportion to what it was just a decade ago. Blog, prepper and survivalist websites abound and many offer very good ideas that can be applied or adapted to your own situation and needs. But it is rare to see any of these resources address the question of prepping your diet. If prepping your diet confers significant advantages in a disaster/survival situation, then it will have a significant impact on your food storage strategy and what to look out for during an extended disaster.

The question is, does prepping your diet yield enough advantage to suggest changes to your current diet now? And if so, how does this impact your food storage and preparation plan? The answer to the former question, I think, is yes. An answer to the latter is below.

Fireball 5

Killer ancient meteor strike carved out giant crater, evidence suggests

Impact Crater
© Alberta Geographic Survey/University of AlbertaThis is a map showing the structure and contour of the Bow City crater, possibly created by a giant meteorite impact. Color variation shows meters above sea level.
An ancient ring-shaped structure in southern Alberta, Canada, likely formed when a meteorite smashed into Earth, producing a 5-mile-wide (8 kilometers) crater. The impact would have produced enough energy to destroy a region the size of the land area of New York City, researchers say.

A geologist discovered the structure near the village of Bow City, although time and glaciers have mostly eroded the signs of the ancient meteorite strike. Scientists can't say for sure that a meteorite impact created the Bow City crater, but seismic and geological evidence strongly support this notion.

"An impact of this magnitude would kill everything for quite a distance," Doug Schmitt, a rock physics expert at the University of Alberta, Canada, said in a statement. If the strike happened today, the city of Calgary, which is 125 miles (200 km) to the northwest, would be "completely fried," and in Edmonton, which is 300 miles (500 km) northwest, "every window would have been blown out," he added.

Fireball 3

Daytime "extremely bright" fireball over New York and Canada

fireball ny
© The Canadian Press/YouTube, Sam SinghA purported meteor falls vertically (centre or image) in a video taken on Ingram Drive in North York, Ont and posted to YouTube on Sunday in Sunday May 4, 2014.
People across Western New York and Ontario Canada reported seeing an extremely bright daylight fireball.

Several people caught images of the bright object appearing to explode on dashboard cameras in their cars.

It happened Sunday at about 4:16 p.m. and people said the object had a brightness rivaling the sun.

The American Meteor Society is investigating the incident.

Comment: The skies are likely to get even busier in the very near future, if the chart and trend indicated below is anything to go by. It shows the increase of fireball reports over the last 2 and a half years - particularly since April of last year!




Fireball

Meteor sighting - Bright light seen streaking across sky over southern Ontario


Dozens of Ontario residents say they think they saw a meteor streak across the sky Sunday afternoon, and an expert says there is little doubt that is what they spotted.
Ontario Meteor
© Laurence/Twitter
Peter Brown, a professor at the University of Western Ontario who studies meteors and meteorites, says the widespread eyewitness reports and images are consistent with a meteor.

Many Ontarians took to social media or contacted the American Meteor Society to report either a flash of light or a loud rumble.

Fireball 2

Meteor sighted over Missouri

Fireball
© Stock image from NBC
Springfield - Many of you contacted us after seeing a flash of light in the sky and hearing a big boom late Friday night. We may now have an answer to the question, "What was that?"

Local astronomers say it was a meteor associated with the Eta Aquarids meteor shower, which is set to peak early Tuesday.

The American Meteor Society states that fireballs could be seen across seven states.

After hearing initial reports from viewers around 10:30 Friday night, KY3 posted a Facebook status asking people if they had seen anything and where they were located. More than 2,000 people commented on the post saying that they had seen and/or heard fireballs.

KY3 contacted local authorities Friday night. They did not immediately have an explanation for the flash or the boom.

Fireball

Comet fragment? Unidentified flaming object over Ibiza, Spain - 16 April

Ibiza meteor
The appearance of some kind of body in flames went across the sky of Ibiza last Wednesday evening, created all kinds of speculation on the island. From a possible large meteor to the launch of a missile or rocket, several ideas were shuffled between astronomers and space enthusiasts since the video recording was released by IB3 yesterday.

The events began on Wednesday about seven thirty in the afternoon, when a free-lance camera man, Eduardo de Miguel, who was in the area of Country Club (municipality of Sant Josep ) noticed something unusual in the sky. He grabbed his camera and was able to capture in perfect condition almost three minutes footage of this strange object, following the path West, i.e. towards Sant Antoni. As seen in the video (visible in www.diariodeibiza.es ) , the body appears as a white ball of flames which looks like a typical meteorite or comet.


Members of the Astronomical Association in Eivissa (EPA ) quickly said that it could be a meteorite ( the apex body seems to be right ). This newspaper sought information from the Ministry of Defense and after the video was examined by the department from the Air Force an official spokesman denied that could be a rocket, missile or military vehicle and considered that it is most certainly a piece of "space junk". In particular, it would be a piece (not necessarily small) a section of a spaceship or rocket, after being in orbit, and then it had re-entered the atmosphere on Wednesday. When this happens, objects catching fire by friction with the air, developing a trail of flames and smoke.

Comment:
Reports of meteors or loud booms around the time of this sighting:
Fireball meteors over Japan, 17-19 April 2014
Spectacular fireball from space explodes over Russian city (Video) - 19 April 2014
New Hampshire residents say loud noise sounded like sonic boom - 16 April 2014
Loud boom in Florida blamed on military aircraft - 16 April 2014

Also, this sighting over Ibiza is similar to a sighting of a flaming object over Finland in 2006.




Fireball 5

Bus-size asteroid buzzes Earth, comes closer than the Moon

HL129
© NASA/JPL-Caltech This NASA graphic shows the orbit of asteroid 2014 HL129. Discoveryed on April 28, 2014, the asteroid passed close by Earth on May 3, coming within 186,000 miles of the planet.
A small asteroid about the size of a city bus zipped by Earth at a range closer than the moon early Saturday (May 3), but posed no threat to our planet.

The newly discovered asteroid 2014 HL129 came within 186,000 miles (299,338 kilometers) of Earth when it made its closest approach on Saturday morning, which is close enough to pass between the planet and the orbit of the moon. The average distance between the Earth and moon is about 238,855 miles (384,400 km).

You can watch a video animation of asteroid 2014 HL129's orbit around the sun on Space.com. The asteroid is about 25 feet (7.6 meters) wide, according to NASA's Asteroid Watch project based at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It made its closest approach to Earth at 4:13 a.m. EDT (0813 GMT).

Saturday's close shave by asteroid 2014 HL129 came just days after its discovery on Wednesday, April 28, by astronomers with the Mt. Lemmon Survey team, according to an alert by the Minor Planet Center, an arm of the International Astronomical Union that chronicles asteroid discoveries. The Mt. Lemmon Survey team scans the night sky with a telescope at the Steward Observatory atop Mt. Lemmon in Arizona's Catalina Mountains.

NASA scientists and researchers around the world constantly monitor the sky for potentially dangerous asteroids that could pose a risk of impacting the Earth.

Fireball 4

"Massive" meteor sighted over New Zealand

green meteor
Archive file
New Zealanders are reporting sightings of a "massive" meteor seen in the skies over the country last night.

Edward Ennis, of Christchurch, said he saw a "massive meteor burn up in the sky" from his home in Spreydon about 7.55pm.

"Never seen anything like it," he said. "Amazing."

Vice president of the Canterbury Astronomical Society Adrian Kelly said he was holding an open night at the organisation's observatory when a "sizable fragmented fireball" was seen.