In the middle of the day, a spectacular fireball flashed over the southeastern United States and disintegrated with a loud explosion over the state of Georgia. A golf ball-sized part of the meteor pierced the roof of one of the houses and crashed into the floor. Fortunately, there were no injuries.
Sky & Telescope magazine reported this.
Thus, on June 26, the American Meteor Society received more than 200 reports from 20 states about a bright object that was visible in broad daylight.
Bill Cooke, lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office, said that the fireball was moving at a speed of about 48,280 kilometers per hour and disintegrated at an altitude of about 43 kilometers over West Forest in Georgia.
According to Cooke, the meteor was almost 1 meter wide and weighed more than a ton. The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) estimates that the object hit the atmosphere with a total impact energy of nearly half a kiloton of TNT.
The meteoroid's rapid re-entry is said to have shattered, creating a shockwave that shook windows and caused loud explosions that some observers mistaken for earthquakes. Many reported thunder and rumbling that lasted 10 to 15 seconds. While the vast majority of incoming meteors burn up and turn to dust, a tiny percentage, such as the one in Georgia, reach Earth as meteorites. Most of these form as explosive fireballs known as bolides.
Shortly after the sonic boom, someone in McDonough, Georgia, reported that a golf ball-sized rock had punched a hole in their roof, pierced the ceiling, and crashed through the floor. No one was injured.
According to the publication, meteorite hunters soon arrived in the area and were able to hunt down the stony meteorites. Some of the fragments show stunning flow lines of molten rock flowing across their surfaces — features highly prized by collectors because they provide a snapshot of the space rocks' transition from outer space to planet Earth.
There have been suggestions that this object may be associated with the Beta Taurid meteor shower, a daytime meteor shower active from late June to early July, originating from comet 2P/Enke. However, the publication emphasizes that there is still no convincing evidence of the existence of meteorites associated with the comet that produces the meteor shower.
It is emphasized that almost 50 tons of meteorite material, mostly in the form of dust, enter the Earth's atmosphere every day. Pieces large enough to survive and fall to Earth as a meteorite are rare.
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, on March 12, an explosion was heard in Kyiv, although an air raid alert was not issued at that time. An unknown object was recorded in the sky over the city, which was probably a cosmic body.
Last year, residents of the Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy and other regions could see a bright flash in the sky, which was associated with a cosmic body.
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