Free Republic

I was watching a movie several minutes ago (in West Palm Beach, FL) and saw out my window (facing east)a large shining object quickly plunge from the sky. It freaked me out a bit. Did anyone out there see it? I saw one similar back around 1990-1992 and years later saw it on Discovery as it was captured on video.

French and Italian scientists have analysed a meteorite and discovered that it contains a unique and primordial rock fragment that is thought to have remained largely unaltered since the solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago. The scientists believe the xenolith, which shows unprecedented isotopic variations of nitrogen, may offer insight into the solar system's formation and say it poses serious problems for current models of light element isotopic fractionation.  Light element isotopic ratios are the result of formation mechanisms and particular physical and chemical conditions. Understanding them can therefore help determine whether extraterrestrial materials formed in the solar nebula...

A teenager was hit by a meteorite travelling at 30,000mph - and lived to tell the tale.Gerrit Blank was on his way to school when he saw a massive fireball heading straight towards him from the sky. The white-hot meteorite bounced off the schoolboy's hand and hit the ground so hard it left a foot-long crater in the tarmac - as well as a three-inch scar on his hand. Gerrit, 14, said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. "Then, a split second after that, there was...

A bright and fast object seemingly "overtook" the International Space Station May 29, according to several witnesses observing from two different states, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness database. The first case was reported from Texas, where a man and two other witnesses were out watching the International Space Station fly over, and then observed this second object - moving at between two and-a-half and three times the speed of the space station. A second group is reporting in from the RMCC Observatory, Mounds, Oklahoma, who say they saw the same event.

Second Loud Boom Rattles Windows In NY May Have Been Meteorite (3/9/2009) There's been another loud "boom." This time it rattled windows in parts of Rockland County. Nanuet resident Keith Wallenstein said the mysterious noise woke him up at about 5:15 Monday morning and sounded like someone had flown an F-16 over his house. An earlier loud "boom" heard in Westchester County early Saturday might have been a meteorite. Police and The Journal News got a flurry of reports from people in Scarsdale, Mount Vernon, Yonkers, Tuckahoe, Eastchester and Bronxville. Weather officials say there was no thunder in the area...

The tsunami washed over Fire Island and, to the west, waves perhaps as high as 20 feet spilled into Lower Manhattan. The furious onrush of water left sediment a foot and a half deep on the Jersey Shore, and debris cascaded far up the Hudson River. No, there’s no need to rush to higher ground, commandeer a rowboat in Central Park or empty the closet to grab the rubber boots. This disaster occurred about 2,300 years ago, though how bad it was, or even if it was a tsunami, remains in dispute. But several geologists have collected evidence indicating that...

Update (16:00 PST Dec. 14th): Eyewitness accounts are becoming more detailed, if you were in the Auckland area at 10pm (December 13th) and you saw something, please let me know (by leaving a comment below). Please give as detailed an account as possible, including your location and the direction at which you saw the meteorite. Hopefully we’ll piece this event together… A fire erupted in an Auckland warehouse shortly after several eyewitness reported seeing a meteorite over the North Island of New Zealand. One witness (named “Mike”) even went as far to say that he watched the fiery object hit...

Washington, Oct 06: A meteorite, which crashed into Australia 40 years ago, is telling researchers new things about how life may have started on Earth, and how that almost universal protein left-handedness came to be. For more than 150 years, scientists have known that the most basic building blocks of life - chains of amino acid molecules and the proteins they form - almost always have the unusual characteristic of being overwhelmingly “left-handed.” The molecules, of course, have no hands, but they are almost all asymmetrical in a way that parallels left-handedness. This observation, first made in the 1800s by...

'Biggest UK space impact found' By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News The impact occurred about 1.2 billion years ago. Evidence of the biggest meteorite ever to hit the British Isles has been found by a team of scientists. Researchers from the universities of Oxford and Aberdeen think a large object hit north-west Scotland about 1.2 billion years ago. The space rock struck the ground near the present-day town of Ullapool, they report in Geology journal. The scientists found what they believe to be debris which was flung out when the impact crater was formed. "If there had been human...

Mysterious Meteorites Stymie Scientists Anne Minard for National Geographic NewsMarch 12, 2008 A pair of mysterious meteorites discovered in Antarctica is baffling scientists who are struggling to determine the origin of the space rocks. The meteorites, dubbed GRA 06128 and GRA 06129, were found in the Graves Nunataks region of Antarctica in 2006 (see an interactive map of Antarctica). The rocks were oddly rusty and salty and smelled like rotten eggs, its discoverers said. Initially, a team at the University of New Mexico (UNM) caused a stir when its analysis hinted that the pair may hail from Venus or the...

How The Peruvian Meteorite Made It To EarthThe Carancas Fireball. Planetary geologists had thought that stony meteorites would be destroyed when they passed through Earth's atmosphere. This one struck ground near Carancas, Peru, at about 15,000 miles per hour. Brown University geologists have advanced a new theory that would upend current thinking about stony meteorites. (Credit: Peter Schultz, Brown University) ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2008) — It made news around the world: On Sept. 15, 2007, an object hurtled through the sky and crashed into the Peruvian countryside. Scientists dispatched to the site near the village of Carancas found a gaping...

Astronomers Capture Rare Video Of Meteor Falling To Earth; Hunt For Meteorite ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2008) — Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, have captured rare video of a meteor falling to Earth. The Physics and Astronomy Department at Western has a network of all-sky cameras in Southern Ontario that scan the sky monitoring for meteors. Associate Professor Peter Brown, who specializes in the study of meteors and meteorites, says that Wednesday evening (March 5) at 10:59 p.m. EST these cameras captured video of a large fireball and the department has also received a number of...

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2008) — Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, have captured rare video of a meteor falling to Earth. Astronomy Department at Western has a network of all-sky cameras in Southern Ontario that scan the sky monitoring for meteors. Associate Professor Peter Brown, who specializes in the study of meteors and meteorites, says that Wednesday evening (March 5) at 10:59 p.m. EST these cameras captured video of a large fireball and the department has also received a number of calls and emails from people who actually saw the light.

SPOKANE, Wash. — An apparent meteor streaked through the sky over the Pacific Northwest early Tuesday, drawing reports of bright lights and sonic booms in parts of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Although a witness reported seeing the object strike the Earth in a remote part of Adams County, in southeast Washington, it had not been found. "I'm convinced it was a meteor," said Geoff Chester, spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. "It was a classic description of a fireball." Chester speculated the meteor was the size of a big suitcase and had been orbiting the sun for...

Well water of the tiny Canadian town of Gypsumville, Manitoba (population 65) has been poisoned by an extraterrestrial. The invader: A meteorite which struck down almost a quarter-billion years ago, creating the 25-mile-wide (40-kilometer) Lake Martin impact crater. The ancient impact shattered the granitic ground so that extraordinary amounts of fluoride now taint the well water. Slightly higher than recommended amounts of fluoride can cause mottled teeth, while even higher concentrations can lead to neurological problems and softened bones. This is could be the first time a meteor impact has been tied to a modern health threat, say the geologists...

A fiery meteorite crashed into southern Peru over the weekend, experts confirmed on Wednesday. But they were still puzzling over claims that it gave off fumes that sickened 200 people. Local residents told reporters that a fiery ball fell from the sky and smashed into the desolate Andean plain near the Bolivian border Saturday morning. Jose Mechare, a scientist with Peru's Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute, said a geologist had confirmed that it was a "rocky meteorite," based on the fragments analyzed. He said water in the meteorite's muddy crater boiled for maybe 10 minutes from the heat and could...

LIMA, Peru - A fiery meteorite crashed into southern Peru over the weekend, experts confirmed on Wednesday. But they were still puzzling over claims that it gave off fumes that sickened 200 people. Local residents told reporters that a fiery ball fell from the sky and smashed into the desolate Andean plain near the Bolivian border Saturday morning. Jose Mechare, a scientist with Peru's Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute, said a geologist had confirmed that it was a "rocky meteorite," based on the fragments analyzed. He said water in the meteorite's muddy crater boiled for maybe 10 minutes from the...

Meteorite makes villagers ill VILLAGERS in southern Peru have been struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite made a fiery crash to Earth in their area. Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was a plane crashing near their remote village, in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia. Residents complained of headaches and vomiting... Farking Excerpt Snippers... A picture of the crater and a link to an article that makes for fun reading after a Google translation. El Nuevo Diario

TOMS RIVER (1010 WINS) -- A fiery streak across the sky got the attention of the Coast Guard Saturday night, after the reported fireball crashed into the waters off the Jersey Shore. Concerned calls started coming in from South Carolina to Long Island about 9 p.m. Coast Guard boats were searching near the site of the reported impact, off Normandy Beach in Toms River, about 10 miles off shore. No debris has been found in the water. The Toms River Fire Department says it also got some calls and there were at least 20 people on the beach with the...

The meteors that are about to rain down in the early morning of September 1 date from around 4 A.D., the latest calculations show. It is not often that we can tell when a shooting star was first released from a comet into space, to travel as a meteoroid in an orbit around the Sun, and finally collide with Earth's atmosphere to shine as a meteor for our enjoyment. Most meteors that sporadically flash across the sky on a dark moonless night date from anonymous times. Only in recent years have we learned to trace young meteor showers, just a...

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian police were combing the northern Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on Friday for a three-tonne meteorite that has disappeared from under the nose of its keepers. The giant rock was stolen from the yard of the Tunguska Space Event foundation, whose director said it was the part of meteor that caused a massive explosion in Siberia in 1908, news agency Interfax reported. "It winds up that it disappeared back in June, when the foundation was moving out of its old building," a police spokesman told the agency. "Our colleagues are establishing what got lost, where the rock...

GRAND MARAIS, Minn. - A forest fire has led to a chance discovery of debris from the impact of a meteorite 1.85 billion years ago, more than 450 miles away at Sudbury, Ontario. Geologists had scheduled a field trip in May along the Gunflint Trail in northeastern Minnesota, but most areas they wanted to explore were closed because of a wildfire that charred more than 118 square miles. Geologist Mark Jirsa of the Minnesota Geological Survey went up the trail to scout new locations and, in a spot he had never visited before, stumbled across debris now linked to the...

Sorry for the shameless vanity, but I was just outside in the back yard in Northern Georgia, and an incredibly bright light illuminated the dark yard like an arc lamp. I looked up and saw a meteor streaking overhead, white hot, which then broke up into orange, glowing fragments. This happened at 10:21PM EST. I apologize for posting something random like this, but it was astonishing. Perhaps it was a piece of space junk that reentered the atmosphere tonight. Did anyone else see this? It was truly spectacular.

Scientists Say NJ Object Is Meteorite Friday January 5, 2007 11:16 PM FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) - A mysterious rocklike object that crashed through the roof of a home and landed in the bathroom was a meteorite, experts said Friday. For now, scientists are calling the dense metallic object ``Freehold Township'' after the place where it fell. It's about the size of a golf ball but weighs about 13 ounces, as much of a can of soup. Magnets held near it are attracted to it. Rutgers University geologists Jeremy Delaney, Gail Ashley and Claire Condie and Peter Elliott, an independent...

Mysterious Egyptian Glass Formed by Meteorite Strike, Study Says Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News December 21, 2006 Strange specimens of natural glass found in the Egyptian desert are products of a meteorite slamming into Earth between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, scientists have concluded. The glass—known locally as Dakhla glass—represents the first clear evidence of a meteorite striking an area populated by humans. At the time of the impact, the Dakhla Oasis, located in the western part of modern-day Egypt, resembled the African savanna and was inhabited by early humans, according to archaeological evidence (see Egypt map.) "This meteorite...

Meteorite's Organic Matter Older Than the Sun, Study Says Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News November 30, 2006Organic globules found in a meteorite that slammed into Canada's Tagish Lake may be older than our sun, a new study says. The ancient materials could offer a glimpse into the solar system's planet-building past and may even provide clues to how life on Earth first arose. "We don't really look at this research as telling us something about [the meteorite itself] as much as telling us something about the origins of the solar system," said Scott Messenger of the NASA Johnson Space...

Space impact 'saved Christianity'By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Did a meteor over central Italy in AD 312 change the course of Roman and Christian history? About the size of a football field: The impact crater left behind A team of geologists believes it has found the incoming space rock's impact crater, and dating suggests its formation coincided with the celestial vision said to have converted a future Roman emperor to Christianity. It was just before a decisive battle for control of Rome and the empire that Constantine saw a blazing light cross the sky and attributed...

GREENSBURG, Kan. - Scientists located a rare meteorite in a Kansas wheat field thanks to new ground-penetrating radar technology that someday might be used on Mars. The dig Monday was likely the most documented excavation yet of a meteorite find, with researchers painstakingly using brushes and hand tools to preserve evidence of the impact trail and to date the event of the meteorite strike. Soil samples also were bagged and tagged and organic material preserved for dating purposes. Even before they had the meteorite out of the ground, the scientific experts at the site were able to debunk prevailing wisdom...

Calls streamed in to local police stations during the night after an unidentified flying object darted over the night skies in northern Norway. A top astronomer, though, thinks it was another meteorite. Astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard thinks the object flying though the northern skies Monday night was a meteorite. Several police districts logged reports from members of the public who observed "something" flying at high speed. "What they're talking about here is some sort of flying object, and we can't explain what it was," Oddgeir Slettli, operations leader for the Midtre Hålogaland Police District, told dagbladet.no. Observations were reported...

It was a science fiction fantasy come true: Ten years ago this summer, NASA announced the discovery of life on Mars. At a Washington, D.C., news conference, scientists showed magnified pictures of a four-pound Martian meteorite riddled with wormy blobs that looked like bacterial colonies. The researchers explained how they had pried numerous clues from the rock, all strongly supporting their contention that microscopic creatures once occupied its nooks and crannies. It was arguably the space agency's most imagination-gripping moment since Apollo. Space buffs and NASA officials said that it just might be the scientific discovery of the century. "If...

Astronomers were fending off scores of calls on Friday from Norwegians who reported hearing what experts are calling a meteor explosion over southeast Norway, somewhere over the Oslo Fjord area. NORSAR, in Kjeller, has registered a signal from the explosion. Officials at NORSAR and at the University of Oslo said there likely are remnants of the meteor lying on the ground between Gardermoen to the northeast of Oslo and Askim to the southeast. "I urge people to search for particles that may have fallen to earth," astronomer Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard told Aftenposten.no. He said the stones would be black...

There's a new crater on the Moon. It's about 14 meters wide, 3 meters deep and precisely one month, eleven days old. NASA astronomers watched it form: "On May 2, 2006, a meteoroid hit the Moon's Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) with 17 billion joules of kinetic energy—that's about the same as 4 tons of TNT," says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL. "The impact created a bright fireball which we video-recorded using a 10-inch telescope." Lunar impacts have been seen before--"stuff hits the Moon all the time," notes Cooke--but this is the best-ever...

As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima. ... At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of Troms and the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire taking several seconds to travel across the sky. ... "I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a tail of smoke," Bruvold told Aftenposten.no. He photographed the object and then continued to tend to his animals when he heard an enormous crash. "I heard the bang...

Water found in meteorite Tiny bubbles are caught in the water Scientists have made the first discovery of liquid water in a meteorite. The space rock was recovered by a group of boys in a small Texas town who saw it fall out of the sky in 1998. Specimens taken to Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston were subjected to tests by Michael Zolensky and his colleagues. When they cracked open the rock they found tiny, purple spots of halite - crystals of sodium chloride, or table salt - along with minute amounts of briny water. Others who have looked...

A rare 1,400-pound (635-kilogram) meteorite was discovered seven feet (2 meters) underground by a collector in an area long known for producing prized space rocks. Using a metal detector mounted on a three-wheel vehicle, Steve Arnold of Kingston, Ark., found the huge meteorite two weeks ago in Kiowa County’s Brenham Township in southern Kansas. The meteorite is classified as an oriented pallasite, a type noted for a conical shape with crystals embedded in iron-nickel alloy. Only two larger ones of that type are known to have been found: a 3,100-pounder in Australia and a 1,500-pounder in Argentina. Those translate into...

GREENSBURG, Kan. - In an area of southwest Kansas long known for its meteorite finds, Steve Arnold came up with what may be the biggest of its kind ever found in the United States. Arnold, a professional meteorite hunter from Kingston, Ark., found the 1,400-pound space rock two weeks ago in Kiowa County's Brenham Township. Using a metal detector mounted on a three-wheel vehicle, he discovered it more than 7 feet underground and dug it up. It was in the same area that in 1949 produced a 1,000-pound meteorite now on display at the Celestial Museum in Greensburg, part of...

The original home of the world's most famous space rock, the Allen Hills Martian meteorite, has now been identified, thanks to data from the orbiting spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey and a better understanding of cratering dynamics. The rock, called ALH84001, has been the subject of intense study ever since 1996 when scientists from NASA's Johnson Space Center startled the world by reporting that fossilised microbial life might be embedded inside it. The rock, which formed at the very dawn of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago, was blasted from the surface of Mars around 17 million...

HELSINKI (AFP) - An exceptionally bright "fireball" was spotted slicing through the sky over Finland before exploding over the country's border with Russia. The phenomenon was witnessed by dozens of people in the eastern part of the country, the Finnish Astronomical Association (URSA) said Wednesday. "Our mathematicians have roughly calculated that the (fireball) began its decent over our eastern border and ended in an explosion over the Russian Karelia region," URSA newsletter editor Marko Pekkola told AFP. Closer calculations will be needed to determine the exact route taken by the "fireball", which was probably an incandescent meteorite, Pekkola added.

PORTLAND - A flaming object was spotted streaking through the Saturday night sky across Western Oregon and the impact was heard all the way from Salem to Medford, according to various reports. Newspapers across the western half of the state and KPTV were getting phone calls from people who saw the object. Summer Jensen of Portland said she was sitting in her living room with her father when they saw the flash of light outside and rushed to see what it was. "I've never seen anything like that," Jensen said, adding that the object appeared to be moving slowly compared...

LOS ANGELES - In a stroke of luck, the NASA (news - web sites) rover Opportunity has discovered a basketball-size metal meteorite sitting on the surface of Mars, the mission's main scientist said Tuesday. Opportunity came upon the meteorite last week while it was taking a look at a spacecraft shell that was jettisoned before landing after protecting the rover during its plunge through the martian atmosphere. Tests performed during the weekend confirm it is a nickel-iron meteorite, said Steve Squyres, a Cornell University scientist who is the principal investigator for NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers mission. "I didn't see this...

1. Introduction As related by Clube and Napier in their monograph The Cosmic Winter, see [1], in the year 1178 A.D. four wise men of Canterbury were sitting outside on a clear and calm 18th June night, a half Moon standing placidly in the starry sky. Suddenly they noticed a flame jutting out of a horn of the Moon. Then they saw the Moon tremble and its colour change slowly from light brilliant to a darker reddish tone. Such a colour remained for all the time the Moon was visible during that phase. This story is found in a manuscript...

The object, named 2004 YD5, was about 16 feet (5 meters) wide, though that's a rough estimate based on its distance and assumed reflectivity. Had it entered the atmosphere, it would have exploded high up, experts figure. The asteroid passed just under the orbits of geostationary satellites, which at 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) altitude are the highest manmade objects circling Earth. Most other satellites, along with the International Space Station, circle the planet at just a few hundred miles up... the second closest pass of an asteroid ever observed by telescope, according to the Asteroid/Comet Connection, a web site that...

Meteorite 'photographed' hitting Earth By Nigel Adlam November 24, 2004NORTHERN Territory scientists were last night studying what could be the first photograph of a meteorite hitting Earth. The chances of an impact being captured on film are millions to one. "If this is true, it's one of the most remarkable pictures ever taken," astronomy tutor Geoff Carr said yesterday. The photograph was taken by keen amateur photographer Wayne Pryde as he stood near the Darwin Cenotaph on The Esplanade and looked down to Fort Hill Wharf on Monday evening. The meteorite, which could have been as small as a grain...

LONDON (AFP) - Most people would think they were supremely unlucky to be struck by a falling meteorite while out in their back garden. Yet great-grandmother Pauline Aguss is just grateful the rock only grazed her arm. The 76-year-old was hit by a swiftly-falling fragment of rock while hanging out washing in her garden in the county of Suffolk, the Sun newspaper reported in its Wednesday edition. If the golf ball-sized fragment is confirmed as originating from space, Aguss will be the first Briton ever known to have been struck by a meteorite. Aguss told the newspaper that she had...

Probe to 'look inside' asteroids By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff in Paris, France Studies of asteroids would aid Earth-protection strategies A new space mission concept unveiled at a Paris conference aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved. The perceived threat of asteroids colliding with our planet has renewed interest in space missions to understand these...

A METEORITE reportedly the size of a house fell on the NSW south coast overnight, exploding in a bright flash, police have said. A driver on the Hume Highway shortly after 9pm (AEST) near Menangle reported an object the size of a house falling from the sky. The object fell east of the Hume Highway, possibly in an escarpment near the top of a hill at Bulli, police were told. The meteorite was described as glowing silver in colour and similar to an artillery shell when it exploded with a bright flash on impact. Workers at the Sydney Airport Tower...

Pravda.RU:Top Stories:More in detail 15:33 2003-03-18Very Large Meteorite Fell Down in Siberia The falling of the meteorite is still mysterious. Scientists say that it might weigh 60 tons The night was rather dull in the north-east of the Russian Irkutsk region on September 25, 2002. All of a sudden, night turned into day. A very bright glow covered the sky, it was hard to look at it. Those people, who happened to be outside at 2 a.m., saw a ball of fire that was flying very fast across the sky. Weird rusting sounds could be heard. A few seconds...

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A grapefruit-sized meteorite smashed through the roof of a New Zealand house, hitting a couch and bouncing off the ceiling before coming to rest under a computer. The 1.3 kg (2.9 lb) chunk of space debris dropped out of the sky and plummeted through the tiled roof of the Auckland home Saturday. "I was in the kitchen doing breakfast and there was this almighty explosion," owner Brenda Archer told the Sunday Star-Times newspaper. "It was like a bomb had gone off. I couldn't see anything, there was just dust." Archer's one-year-old grandson had been playing nearby minutes...

Rattled outdoor furniture, frightened cats. We heard reports from several readers about the mysterious booms and flashes of light early this morning over Puget Sound: "I was watching late night TV when at exactly 2:42 p.m. I saw the sky light up like a nuclear bomb had exploded. The entire sky and my whole yard glowed a luminous red color. I went outside to investigate and could hear a loud rumbling noise."

Possible Meteor Over Western Washington Thursday, June 03, 2004 SEATTLE — Bright flashes and sharp booms were reported in the skies over the Puget Sound (search) area early Thursday, and aviation officials said a meteor (search) may have been the source. An early report that a meteor might have hit near Chehalis, about 90 miles south of the city, turned out to be false, a University of Washington scientist who specializes in meteorites said. Toby Smith, a lecturer in astronomy, told The Associated Press scientists were looking into the cause of the skybursts reported over a wide area about 2:40...