I’m trying to understand something I saw yesterday morning. I was driving on a back-road around 6:30am and the sky was still pitch black. I was looking up at said sky, contemplating its very blackness, when out of nowhere this bright light flared up among the smattering of stars. It was much bigger than a star, much brighter than a plane. The intensity of brightness and size increased as it dropped toward the earth–almost a vertical drop straight down from my angle, seeming to leave a trail of light behind it… and it wasn’t anywhere near my horizon when the light went out. It happened in the space of a couple seconds–maybe less. It was bright and fast, almost instantaneous.
I figure it was a ‘‘shooting star’’ but then I realized I really have no idea what that means, in astronomical terms. Is it a meteorite? A comet? Was I supposed to make a whimsical wish or what? (If so, don’t think it achieved the desired effect–it scared the crap out of me and I nearly slammed on my brakes.)
So give me your best guess of what I saw fall flaming from the sky yesterday.
That’s right, Olive–a chunk of something. People often confuse them with comets, which, when you look at one observable in the sky, doesn’t actually move.
Well, it was too dark to see if there was a cloud behind it… but it did seem to have some kind of tail… though that might have just been a visual trick resulting from the speed at which it fell.
Okay, this is cool! That I happened to be glancing up right then, and saw a shooting star. Makes me feel special.
There’s also the difference that on a clear night in a dark sky you could see dozens of meteors, whereas you’re lucky to see a dozen comets in a lifetime.
I saw an honest to god meteorite fall one night, maybe 12-13 years ago. It was amazing to witness. There was heavy cloud cover, and all the sudden this brilliant, green light bust through, and lit up the surrounding clouds. Very other-worldly. It had a thick vapor-trail, then disappeared beyond the horizon of buildings, until there was a bright flash. My friends were sure it was a plane crash, but I assured them it was most likely a meteorite. The next day, on the radio, there was all kinds of eye-witness reports coming in, and they estimated it had landed somewhere in Lake St. Claire.
When I was a ten-year-old, me and my wee brother were at a Guy Fawkes thing, and there was a bit of a gap in the firework display. A meteor, or possibly a fireball, absolutely ripped across the sky - I mean like the thing lit up the surrounding hills and trees. The old army sergeant who lived near us and was setting off the fireworks, just looked up and said in the midst of the silence “Fucking hell!”. He set the rest of the explosives off. Bless you, Sergeant McCasky you crazy pyromaniac…
Most of the garden-variety “shooting stars” one can see dozens of on a clear night are no bigger than a grain of sand. Large, bright ones like the OP saw are rarer, ranging from golf-ball- to baseball-sized and happen about once a day somewhere over the Earth. Really big, bright fireballs or bolides average a few a year and start a basketball-sized and go up from there. Once these objects approach car size, they may frequently survive the trip through the atmosphere to impact the ground and become meteorites. Most smaller objects burn up completely long before coming anywhere near the ground.
On average, about once every hundred million years or so, an object the size of a city hits us and causes a catastrophe on a global scale. The last such one was about 65 million years ago; it’s only a matter of time before another comes.
I was just reading in ‘‘Discover’’ magazine about some scientist who theorizes that Great Flood myths are based on an actual event caused by a meteor striking somewhere off the coast of Africa, which caused a giant tsunami that ultimately killed off 70% of life on earth. Kind of freaky.
Although I do believe that it was a meteor you saw (depending on how degrees of sky it crossed), a secondary explanation could be an Iridium Flash which is a reflection from a certain group of satellites that have large panels on them that reflect sunlight very well. They can build up in brightness rapidly as high as magnitude -8, last for a second or two, and then fade rapidly undetectable. But, the giveaway is that they move fast for a satellite, but not as fast as a meteor.
Yep, that’s what his critics say. It was an interesting article nonetheless. Made me think about the ways in which myths may spring to life. The onus is still on him to prove it, though.
Regardless of whether or not those claims are true, what is clear is that meteors strike the earth all the time, and it’s really only a matter of when another cataclysmic event will occur, not if.
