More information on last week's meteor plus a visit to the past
Aug. 8—TRI-COUNTY — A more detailed, scientific reasoning of the bright light and sonic boom witnessed by many Kentucky residents last week was explained by a NASA professional on Thursday.
Early last Wednesday morning, many reports came into news outlets across the commonwealth that a fireball and sonic boom were witnessed. As Kentucky residents shared their experiences on social media, people began to wonder what caused the ground-shaking anomaly.
Spaceweather.com, which specializes in reporting on space weather from a scientific outlook and often crediting professionals in astronomy, gave the public an answer we all have been searching for.
NASA reported that the bright light was a comet fragment weighing about 75 pounds and over a foot in diameter.
Bill Cooke, lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, reported what their offices recorded the early morning of Wednesday around 2 a.m.
"It entered Earth's atmosphere about 50 miles above the Kentucky town of Krypton moving roughly southeast at 37,000 miles per hour," Cooke said. "The object traveled 65 miles through the atmosphere before disintegrating 30 miles above Duffield, Virginia."
The explosion was recorded by a professional infrasound station operated by the University of Western Ontario meteor physics group.
"The breakup of the fireball generated an energy of roughly two tons of TNT, which caused the booms and shakings experienced by some in the region. At its brightest, the fireball was about five times brighter than the full moon," Cooke said.
Alexander Cox, a local professional system engineer who has been studying such phenomena as a hobby for many years, explained this in a bit more detail.
"There are no typical meteors. Sizes can range from smaller that a single piece of sand to objects as large as boulders. A larger meteor will have greater mass if/when it explodes due to ram pressure (a compressed atmospheric shock wave created by the immense speed of the meteor as it plummets toward the surface)," Cox explained.
Due to the object weighing in at 75 pounds as reported by NASA and traveling at a speed of 37,000 miles per hour this created the loud sonic boom heard by hundreds in the southeast region of the state.
"The sounds generated will be proportional to the meteors mass and speed. The same explanation goes for the 'brighter' description, greater mass, larger surface area, and immense speed will generate more energy," Cox said.
This is not the first time a similar phenomenon has occurred in this part of Kentucky. In 1919, Whitley County experienced a meteorite at Cumberland Falls with the local paper being the first to report the communities first-hand experiences.
Of course in 1919, the word spread a bit slower without social media. However, scientists recovered the meteorite and pieces are now displayed at the University of Kentucky and the Smithsonian Museum.
In a scientific journal recording the April 1919 incident, Arthur M. Miller from the Department of Geology at University of Kentucky in June of 1919 wrote:
"The concussions produced by the bolide were terrific, causing buildings to rock, and producing the impression on some that the region was being visited by an earthquake. The first news of the phenomenon printed in the local papers so recorded it."
Sound familiar?
Maybe the fragments of Wednesday morning's meteor will be found and displayed in science and history museums for other generations like ourselves to reflect on fireballs of the past.
