A large, bright meteor fell over Europe on Sunday, and some observers said they could hear the rock’s explosive fall from the ground.
By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanne Brner
NASA
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A huge fireball streaked across Europe’s night sky on Sunday, flooding at least one German city with debris and sparking an investigation into the object’s size.
The European Space Agency Planetary Defense Teamwho is leading the investigation, currently estimates that the fireball measured a few meters in diameter. Apparently the event was audible from the ground and the fireball visibly glowed for about six seconds. Debris falling from the meteor damaged a house, the agency said, but no injuries were reported.
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For comparison, a large meteor that fell in Russia’s Chelyabinsk Oblast in 2013 measured 18 meters in diameter. It exploded as it descended about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) above the ground, flooding the surrounding area with debris and triggering a shock wave that shattered windows of homes, injuring many people. Scientists estimated that it had the same explosive power as approximately 440,000 tonnes of TNTaccording to NASA.
Because of the timing of Sunday’s event and the direction the meteor was moving as it fell, the European Space Agency does not believe any of the large-scale telescope sky surveys designed to search for these objects would have detected it.
We don’t know where the fireball came from; These falling space rocks are often debris from passing comets and asteroids. When these rocks quickly enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they burn: the larger the rock, the more intense the burn. If fragments of a meteor survive the journey through the atmosphere to hit the ground, they then become a meteorite. Unless they are very large, meteors usually break up in the atmosphere, as the fireball over Europe did on Sunday.
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