A seven-ton meteorite crossed several American states and disintegrated with a deafening noise
A meteorite of about seven tons, observed from several American states, crossed the sky above the city of Cleveland at a speed of about 72,000 km/h and disintegrated with a loud noise, international press agencies report.
The meteorite was observed in several states PHOTO video capture
The resulting explosion released an energy equivalent to approximately 250 tons of TNT, and the sound wave was strong enough to be heard and felt even by staff at the National Weather Service in Cleveland.
Witnesses from several countries reported that they saw on Tuesday, around 9:00 local time (15:00, Romanian time), “a glowing ball of fire”. The American Meteor Society has received sightings from a wide area, from Wisconsin to Maryland.
NASA later confirmed that the object was about 1.8 meters in diameter. No fragments of the meteorite were immediately identified. “There may be a few small pieces, but most of it has disintegrated in the atmosphere”meteorologist Brian Mitchell said.
A small asteroid
The meteorite was first spotted about 50 miles above Lake Erie near Lorain. It traveled more than 55 kilometers through the upper atmosphere before fragmenting over Valley City, north of Medina, according to a statement from Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office in Huntsville, Alabama.
“It really looked like a fireball, which indicates that we are talking about a meteorite, meaning a small asteroid,” explained astronomer Carl Hergenrother. He pointed out that although objects burning in the atmosphere can sometimes be re-entering satellites they are usually not as bright.
According to Hergenrother, meteorites reach the United States about once a day on average, and smaller particles of cosmic dust fall as often as several times an hour. Scientists monitor these phenomena with the help of special camera networks, but increasingly such events are also captured by the public, with mobile phones or surveillance cameras.
