Meteor Explodes Over Canada 5/4/2014

Searched for about 10 minute's i figured this would be posted but couldn't find it if this has by all means close.

Meteor Explodes Over Canada

Yesterday on Sunday, May 4th, a meteor exploded over southern Ontario in Canada. The sighting occurred just before 4:20 pm local time and produced a flash of light that witnesses say rivaled the brightness of the sun. The explosion caused a loud crashing sound, leading many citizens to wonder if their house had sustained any damage.

The meteor was about half a meter long, causing it to explode with the force of 20-30 tons of dynamite, astronomy professor Peter Brown told CBC News. Although the Earth gets pelted with up to 78,000 tons of space debris each year, most of them occur over water or uninhabited areas.



Read more at www.iflscience.com...

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I'm glad it exploded...we dodged another one.

not surprised,if you go to neo website there is a few close ones in next few days and what i,ve been noticing they seem to be getting more regular.



neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

a reply to: HattoriHanzo

The first thoughts I had when I woke up this afternoon were images and wondering about a meteor impact. I was imagining how bad it could be if a large meteor struck near where I live. I'm calling psychic vision on this one.

originally posted by: sparky31
not surprised,if you go to neo website there is a few close ones in next few days and what i,ve been noticing they seem to be getting more regular.



neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

I don't know if they are getting more regular, or if they had always been there and we just: a) have found more NEOs due to looking harder for them while using better equipment, and b) know more about the fireballs that do strike the atmosphere because of the instantaneous dissemination of information via the internet, plus the increased number of car dash cams and security cameras.

In the past (pre-internet), if a fireball went over some distant part of the world, the rest of the world would not really get the news like they do now through the internet. I'm sure meteor researchers would know about them, but the rest of us would not. Also, we see more videos of these meteors these days because there are exponentially more cameras around today than there was just 15 years ago.

I mean, do you really think the average person in the world (even as close as the U.S.) would have had any knowledge about this Toronto fireball if there was no internet or dash-cam footage?

And maybe the reason we have more NEOs tracked today that ever before could be that we just recently (in the past 10+ years or so) began to seriously track NEOs. In the past, there may have been just as many NEOs, but they went unnoticed and thus unknown.

originally posted by: InTheLight
I'm glad it exploded...we dodged another one.

Hardly. If it was only half a metre in diameter it would never have reached the ground. It would have to be much, much bigger than that to reach Earth. (The Chelyabinsk meteor last year was more like 20 metres across and only fragments hit the ground.)


Still, thanks for flagging this up OP! I hadn't heard about it. These things are getting captured more and more with the ubiquity of video cameras, dashcams etc.

originally posted by: Rob48

originally posted by: InTheLight
I'm glad it exploded...we dodged another one.

Hardly. If it was only half a metre in diameter it would never have reached the ground. It would have to be much, much bigger than that to reach Earth. (The Chelyabinsk meteor last year was more like 20 metres across and only fragments hit the ground.)


Still, thanks for flagging this up OP! I hadn't heard about it. These things are getting captured more and more with the ubiquity of video cameras, dashcams etc.

A meteor actually striking Earth is dependent on various factors.

"Based on the data and the eyewitness reports it appears the shockwave occurred in the area of Peterborough, Ont., and its characteristics allowed for an estimate of the size of the meteor, said Brown.

"The energy is somewhere in the order of a few tens of tons of TNT explosive equivalent," he said in an interview Sunday night. "That would translate into something on the order of half to one metre in diameter and that's going to be a mass of .... a few metric tons."

It's possible some fragments hit the ground, Brown added.

"This clearly was a pretty massive event, lots of mass, so on that basis alone I think we have a pretty good chance that
meteorites would make it to the ground," he said."

www.cbc.ca...

a reply to: InTheLight

Yes perhaps I was a bit hasty in saying that it wouldn't reach the ground (after all, tiny micrometeorites do make it to Earth, but then they are going a lot slower!) What I really meant is that a half-metre meteor is not really a serious threat (unless it happens to land on you...).

I think metre-sized meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere pretty frequently, i.e. at least one a year on average. And of course with so many more cameras around today we should get to see more and more of them

originally posted by: Rob48
a reply to: InTheLight

Yes perhaps I was a bit hasty in saying that it wouldn't reach the ground (after all, tiny micrometeorites do make it to Earth, but then they are going a lot slower!) What I really meant is that a half-metre meteor is not really a serious threat (unless it happens to land on you...).

I think metre-sized meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere pretty frequently, i.e. at least one a year on average. And of course with so many more cameras around today we should get to see more and more of them

But, you are right... it is a very rare occurrence.

Meteorites of this size hit the earth several times a week, says Campbell-Brown. "It not uncommon for these things to hit, what is less common is for them to hit during daytime and in populated areas," she said.

www.huffingtonpost.ca...

Neato.

If it would have hit so what, it's Canada.....

Apparently Earth is passing through the Eta Aquarids meteor shower at the moment. Could this have been related to that perhaps?

originally posted by: 3u40r15m
If it would have hit so what, it's Canada.....

Yes, Canada, one of the most diverse and beautiful places on Earth.

More links here:

www.universetoday.com...

I have to say, the videos don't really seem to back up the "as bright as the sun" descriptions so far.

Apparently this was the third fireball over North America in as many days: www.amsmeteors.org...

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: sparky31
not surprised,if you go to neo website there is a few close ones in next few days and what i,ve been noticing they seem to be getting more regular.



neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

I don't know if they are getting more regular, or if they had always been there and we just: a) have found more NEOs due to looking harder for them while using better equipment, and b) know more about the fireballs that do strike the atmosphere because of the instantaneous dissemination of information via the internet, plus the increased number of car dash cams and security cameras.

In the past (pre-internet), if a fireball went over some distant part of the world, the rest of the world would not really get the news like they do now through the internet. I'm sure meteor researchers would know about them, but the rest of us would not. Also, we see more videos of these meteors these days because there are exponentially more cameras around today than there was just 15 years ago.

I mean, do you really think the average person in the world (even as close as the U.S.) would have had any knowledge about this Toronto fireball if there was no internet or dash-cam footage?

And maybe the reason we have more NEOs tracked today that ever before could be that we just recently (in the past 10+ years or so) began to seriously track NEOs. In the past, there may have been just as many NEOs, but they went unnoticed and thus unknown.

i see where your coming from but internet has still been at the fore front for 10 years + and i,ve still not seen as many incidents as are getting reported today.

as i say i check neo website most days and i,ve noticed an increase in them,infact i,ve noticed an increase in ones getting added after they have already passed,which is quite worrying.

a reply to: sparky31


Of course, when many witnesses come forward we get the news.