As if the world wasn't already
dangerous enough: A small asteroid or meteor
entered earth's atmosphere over
the western US Wednesday night, traveling at a surprisingly
high speed of about a hundred thousand miles an hour.The
object exploded with the force of 0.5 to 1 kiloton of TNT.
It was so bright that it turned the sky blue. Shock waves
shook the ground from Colorado to Utah when it exploded. The
explosion took place just after midnight in the area.
Although the Leonid meteor shower is underway, the object
was not part of it.
Six hours after the fireball, noctilucent clouds appeared in
the dawn sky. There had been no reported rocket launches,
which may mean that the clouds were connected with the
meteor.
A number of asteroids and other large objects are moving
through the solar system at this time. Since July, large
impacts have been recorded on Jupiter, in one of the rings
of Saturn and possibly on Venus. Earth has experienced two
near misses in the past few weeks, and one airburst of an
asteroid over Indonesia on October 8. Like the Indonesian
object, there was no warning of the incoming western US
meteor. Let's hope we start getting warnings about these
space rocks
before it's too late!
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