The Saturday morning noise in Utah may have been caused by a meteorite.
northern Utah was startled by the noise at about 8:32 a.m. Home security cameras caught the sound. The National Weather Service Salt Lake City posted a radar image of two red flashes on a lightning monitor in a spot where there wasn't a storm. According to the weather service, the flashes were likely the result of a meteorite trail.
Home security camera footage from Roy, Utah, shows a blue fireball just before it explodes in the sky.
There were many reports of the fireball.
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There is a difference between asteroids, comets and meteorites.
There have been no reports of meteorites, though a NASA volunteer said that the explosion may have scattered space rock fragments. Experts told the Deseret News that the destruction of the meteor makes it hard to determine where it came from.
Each year in July and August, Earth swings through debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle, which causes the annual Perseid meteor shower. The debris hits Earth's atmosphere at a rate of 133,200 mph. The peak of the Perseid occurred on August 11 and 12.
The sonic booms that come from meteorites are created when they move across the atmosphere faster than sound. The "boom" of a flying object usually comes several seconds after the sight of the fireball. Most of the time, meteorites are too high in the atmosphere for the sound to be heard.
Most of the time, falling space rock is not a big deal. A fireball lit up the sky over Ontario. There are meteorites over Mississippi. Sometimes large meteors cause damage in the atmosphere. A large fireball exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, blowing out thousands of windows. According to EarthSky, the fireball was 65 feet across.
It was originally published on Live Science
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