Yet more booms, but this time we have a culprit. Early Sunday morning around 8:00am on April 22nd, residents of Nevada and Northern California were awoken by a very loud sonic boom. The cause was a large meteor, also known as a bolide, that came very close to the Earth’s atmosphere before exploding.
Apparently this meteor was not actually recorded and all images in the news piece are just example photos. This was not clear to me. So I found some report excerpts from the American Meteor Society below. It even had an odor…
She stated it went up then down, and looked some what triangular, was silver/metallic in color and glowing/flashing (it caught her attention as she thought it was a reflection off the windows/mirrors, but there wasn’t a moving light source in sight).
It was a bright, colorful flash across the sky that stopped abruptly,exploded into what looked like brown pieces (similar to the Road Runner/dynamite cartoons) and then disappeared completely.
It was very low, large and bright and continued across sky towards the Fresno/Sacramento central valley area Glowing yellow and green, very bright
Large boom and some electrophonic hissing afterward.
Also, SMELLED somewhat like the smell of someone WELDING, maybe 20 mins. to 1/2 hour after visual, maybe 20 mins. after sonic boom. Exploded with small fragments and reminded me of the green sparklers on July 4.
The flash was vibrant green with a different coloration in the center, possibly a darker green/blue color. It was conical in shape and its width was longer than its length without the brief trail it left behind.
They’re attributing it to something called a Lyrid meteor shower that happens late in April. The Earth makes an annual pass by a debris field left by a passing comet. This meteor was rare because it could be seen during the day which means it was quite large. The big rock apparently disintegrated before hitting the ground and the explosion was equal to a very small nuclear blast. The guy in this video below says it was probably the size of a washing machine. Many people thought it was an earthquake because it shook houses and rattled windows. I buy the idea it could be part of the Lyrid shower but I haven’t heard of this type of extreme meteor boom before. I also thought the showers were nice and pretty shooting stars, ya know…the quiet kind. From Nevada:
The boom was even weirder because it wasn’t just a boom. According to this article here, witnesses reported that after the explosion there was other rumbling that lasted a while and sounded like thunder. Listen to the police audio below where the police describe TWO booms and low rumbling after the fact. Very strange!
According to this article here, a scientist in Canada specializing in meteor sound waves, said it had a very strong infrasonic signal. The signal was recorded in a monitoring station and lasted 18 minutes. These signals are very low frequency.
Over a week ago another meteor was seen over seven states and it didn’t make a peep.
And this one below is fascinating! The footage is taken from various legitimate sources and was recorded April 14th (INSERT: my mistake…this was from 2010, I will keep it in anyway) over Wisconsin. The poster doesn’t think it’s a meteor. Fun to watch.
So why all of a sudden is there some sort of sonic boom every other day? It’s either unexplained, air shows or meteors. Regardless of the source, it’s disconcerting that the world is suddenly being bombarded with sonic booms.
The video posted on April 14 was posted on April 14, 2010. So it’s not something new. It’s still interesting though(: thanks for posting!
Some, or most of those photos on the original report are simply photos of the Lyrid meteors, or maybe just file photos of other meteors. There was one in particular that wasn’t even a meteor, the image from the International Space Station was from a supply vehicle reentering the atmosphere such as this one here (watch the movie):
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/#progress2_iss_20111029
Does that mean it wasn’t a fireball? No. It’s just that no one that I know of captured the Bolide on film or video or else it would have ended up on many of the astronomy websites that I frequent daily.
The last video was silly. Those weren’t EM fields affecting the streetlights, it was the camera adjusting exposure for the sudden bright flash in the background. Notice the trees lighten as the lamps dim.
I remember hearing about the Wisconsin fireball, but didn’t witness it myself (I’m in northeastern IL). Another one that happened in 2003 where debris actually hit homes on the neighborhood block where I used to live a few years before it happened:
http://tinyurl.com/7rshh6k
Fireballs do happen, and make sound, but are a rare occurrence worldwide.
Clarification on my earlier post: I meant to say that it seems that no one caught the Nevada/CA bolide on film that I’m aware of.
i’m not sure if you have posted info on this yet, but a meteor was also seen over new zealand on April 2nd 2012. I think we will be seeing more of this worldwide. Here is a news article re the NZ event.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/space/news/article.cfm?c_id=325&objectid=10796268
Here’s an interesting article about the meteor in Jayman’s post:
http://www.space.com/15426-daytime-fireball-minivan-size-space-rock.html
One of NASA’s leading meteor scientists doesn’t seem to believe it came from the Lyrid meteor shower, as the above video suggests:
“And while Sunday’s fireball occurred just after the peak of the annual mid-April Lyrid meteor shower, it was likely not a Lyrid meteor, according to Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
“[W]ithout a trajectory, I cannot rule out a Lyrid origin, but I think it likely that it was a background or sporadic meteor,” Cooke said.”
They also noted its unusual size and rare sonic boom and daytime occurrence. Odd how these “rare” occurrences are becoming increasingly common.
I wouldn’t think that the fireball was in any way associated with the Lyrid showers, since the Lyrids are comet “dust” :
http://www.spaceweather.com/meteors/lyrids/lyrids.html
The fireball was thought to have been the size of a minivan and weigh around 150,000 lbs.:
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=121006UAXUE7