If you’re located in the Northeast United States and thought you heard an explosion yesterday afternoon, it wasn’t just your imagination — multiple sources have now confirmed that a 1 meter (3 foot) meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere and broke up in the air off the coast of Massachusetts, releasing the energy equivalent of 300 tons of TNT.
Well, maybe. The latest update from NASA says it might actually qualify as a meteorite, with radar data indicating that debris from the space rock may have fallen into Cape Cod Bay. For those unfamiliar, the difference between a meteor and a meteorite is whether or not any of the object survived its encounter with the atmosphere and made it down to the surface.
There’s an argument to be made that a larger asteroid would have likely set off some alarm bells as it approached the planet, but the fact that this deep space interloper showed up unannounced is a sobering reminder that our ability to detect incoming threats isn’t nearly as robust as we’d like. Fortunately, it looks like the event didn’t result in any serious damage or injury.
Magnet fishers in Cape Cod are stoked.
Speaking of mid-air threats, here’s a reminder of what not to do on an airliner: on Saturday a flight departing Newark airport for Spain had to turn around when it was discovered a Bluetooth device bearing the name “BOMB” was onboard. There was no actual explosive device found on the plane when it was searched upon its return, and reports are that the whole incident was the result of an Ill-conceived device name on a portable speaker.
