A lone space rock had a terminal rupture.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Hundreds of eyewitnesses in Florida, from Jacksonville to Miami, and also the Bahamas, reported a dramatic sight on Monday night: a meteor streaked like a glowing fireball across the sky and then exploded.
Fireballs are seen somewhere around the world almost every night, but it was literally a wonderful way, as some videos of the event show:
In the above footage from a security camera at a home in the Miami area, an eyewitness was shocked to see something fall from the sky, accompanied by a sound like thunder. The sound may be the result of a shock wave of the bolides breaking apart or a sonic surge when it hit the atmosphere at high speed.
The American Meteor Society has collected more than 200 eyewitness reports, including several dozen that reported hearing a sound as well.
Reports that this fireball is in some way related to the near earth asteroid 2021 GW4 which gave the earth a short pass this week is far away, just for the record. That asteroid passed above us at an altitude of more than 9,000 miles, while this fireball and others like it usually start burning at the top of the atmosphere, which is closer to about 60 km high.
There have been no reports so far that meteorites have reached the ground in Florida.
The American Meteor Society estimates that the flaming space rock probably traveled south to north across the Atlantic Ocean between Florida and the Bahamas, and therefore anything that survives is likely to cool to the bottom of the ocean.
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