NASA confirmed on Thursday that a loud boom reported over McAllen, Texas was caused by a meteoroid entering Earth’s atmosphere and fragmenting over the area.
NASA reported that the boulder was 2 feet in diameter and weighed 1,000 pounds before it shattered into little bits and dispersed around the area.
No damage was recorded, but panicked people shared on social media accounts of their homes trembling in response to what they believed was an earthquake.
NASA advised anyone who believes they’ve discovered a fragment to contact the Smithsonian.
They convinced the public that the space rocks presented minimal danger.
NASA stated, ‘While meteorites often enter the Earth’s atmosphere at tremendous speeds, they slow as they travel through the atmosphere and fragment before reaching the ground.’
Rapidly cooling meteorites pose little danger to the public.
At approximately 5 p.m. on Wednesday, the rock glowed through the sky before a loud boom was heard.
Surveillance cameras captured the moment the burning item crashed, causing a deafening explosion and rattling homes, as seen on film.
The National Weather Service reported the item and said its light-detecting satellites detected the signal. On its Geostationary Lightning Mapper, the government then plotted the event.
According to Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra, Houston Air Traffic Control also got reports from two aircraft regarding a suspected meteorite in the vicinity of the town.
A meteor is called a meteorite until it reaches the ground.
Where the precise impact point is uncertain, Guerra stated. There have been no reports of any damage in that area.
One woman believed it to be an earthquake.
She posted on Facebook, “I went outside to observe the situation.”
I believed it to be an earthquake but observed nothing. It’s really strange that there are no earthquakes in Texas.
Another individual compared the sensation to a ‘gas explosion.’
This afternoon we heard a tremendous boom that sounded like a gas explosion, wrote one witness. The earth shook, as did the windows and the home.
Meteoroids are fragments of asteroids that enter the Earth’s atmosphere and transform into meteors. A meteorite the size of Mount Everest caused the demise of the dinosaurs.
Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson recently went on CBS This Morning to discuss how authorities are prepared to defend Earth and combat asteroids – following the appearance of an asteroid in Northwest Europe on Monday.
Tyson stated, “We’ve always known we don’t want to be hit.”
“We’ve been struck, so let’s ask the dinosaurs what happens when you’re struck.
People remember the dinosaurs because they had large teeth and were fierce, but few people consider the fact that 70 percent of the world’s species died extinct during the same event.
Tyson continued, ‘Small ones may come, and maybe we won’t become extinct, but it may wipe away our grid, and we may need to jump-start civilization.’
The Astrophysicist referred to the effort to stop asteroids as “the most costly mission” and stated that it was not as simple as “blowing it up.”
An asteroid lighted up the night sky over the English Channel earlier this week after entering the Earth’s atmosphere early on Monday.
The 3-foot meteoroid produced a shooting star and a ‘airburst’ that was visible across southern England and Wales, as well as portions of northern France as far south as Paris.
The rock, designated 2023 CX1, hit the atmosphere around two miles off the coast of France at 3 a.m., generating a flame as it disintegrated into little pieces that fell into the water.
It was only the seventh occasion that a successful prediction of an asteroid impact had been made, which the European Space Agency described as “a sign of the rapid advancements in global asteroid detection capabilities.”
For scientists, predicting innocuous asteroids such as this morning’s is good practice for spotting ones that could pose a threat to Earth.
The distinction between asteroids, meteorites, and other space rocks is elucidated.
Asteroid is a huge rock fragment left over from collisions or the formation of the solar system. Most are located in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter.
A comet is a rock coated with ice, methane, and other substances. Their orbits carry them far outside the solar system.
A meteor is a flash of light in the atmosphere that occurs when debris burns up.
This debris is referred to as a meteoroid. The majority are so minute that they evaporate in the atmosphere.
If any of this meteoroid reaches Earth, it is referred to as a meteorite.
Typically, asteroids and comets are the origin of meteors, meteoroids, and meteorites.
For instance, if the Earth travels through the tail of a comet, much of the comet’s debris will burn up in the atmosphere, creating a meteor shower.
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