Meteor over Massachusetts prompts reports of booms across US and Canada | Meteors
A meteor over Massachusetts over the weekend ultimately led to reports of explosions and sightings from New England to Canada.
The American Meteor Society said the meteor in question was about 3 feet (1 meter) wide as it entered the atmosphere north of Boston, around the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Officials from the US space agency NASA confirmed that the meteor was a natural material, not a satellite or space debris, and that it entered the atmosphere at 14.06 on Saturday.
American Meteor Society program observer Robert Lunsford said the group has received dozens of reports from Delaware to Montreal of people either hearing a double explosion, feeling a ground tremor or seeing a fireball that resembled a shooting star in the daytime sky.
The double explosion reportedly shook buildings in Massachusetts as far as Rhode Island. A dashboard camera in New York caught There is a meteor speeding across the sky.
“It was definitely bigger than a normal fireball, about a meter wide,” he said.
However, Lunsford said the likelihood of the meteor hitting the ground is low.
“We need more information about the trajectory, speed and other aspects to know for sure whether it hit the ground, but if it hadn’t burned up it would have landed in the ocean,” he said. “Most of them burn before they hit the ground.”
NASA spokesman Allard Beutel said the meteor was traveling at about 120,700 km/h and probably disintegrated about 60 km above the ground.
Meteors move faster than the speed of sound and create pressure waves as they burn and break apart in the atmosphere. This can create a loud sonic boom that can be heard by those on the ground.
NASA estimated that the energy released when the meteor broke apart on Saturday was equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT.
In several states, people shared on social media how they felt buildings shaking. Several videos on the X platform recorded what sounded like two rapid explosions, without fire, smoke or other visual causes.
Many people recorded the shaking they felt with the National Earthquake Information Center and reported it to the U.S. Geological Survey, agency spokesman Steve Sobie confirmed.
The agency asked, “Did you feel it?” He opened an event page according to the number. reports on its website. However, Sobie said there was no event recorded on the agency’s seismographs, meaning the tremor was not caused by an earthquake.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting
