NASA reports a fireball that generated energy equivalent of 3 tonnes of TNT! Read more
Fireball
In three southern states of the United States, more than 30 people bore witness to a fireball ‘ten times brighter than the moon’.
On Wednesday, more than 30 people in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi reported hearing a loud boom, and some reported seeing the fireball.
A witness told the Vicksburg Post that she was in the downtown area when she witnessed an "orange fireball the size of a basketball" travelling west on a downhill course toward the Mississippi River, with a white tail behind it.
No injuries or damages were reported, but some people felt their house shake, as per Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office.
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As per Cooke, the fireball was too small to cause any damage and none of its pieces made it to the ground.
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He said that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration initially detected the fireball using satellites 22,000 kilometres in space. However, the fireball was already in the Earth's atmosphere at the time.
The fireball barrelled towards earth at the speed of 55,000 miles per hour, breaking into pieces as it descended deeper into Earth’s atmosphere.
According to NASA, the fireball was more than ten times brighter than the full moon at its peak and it disintegrated 34 miles above the swampy terrain north of Minorca in Louisiana.
“The fragmentation of this fireball generated an energy equivalent of 3 tonnes of TNT (trinitrotoluene), which created shock waves that propagated to the ground, producing the booms and vibrations felt by people in the area,” said NASA in its statement.
Fireballs or Bolide are exceptionally bright meteors spectacular enough to be seen over a very wide area.
Every year, the American Meteor Society records an increasing number of fireballs. There are probably over 500,000 fireballs per year, but most of them go unreported since they occur over water and half of them happen during the day.
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(With inputs from agencies)
