Free Republic

Thousands witnessed today afternoon : balls of fire crossing over northern Spain.

Meteorite hits Iran Fri January 02, 2004 10:48 AM ET TEHRAN (Reuters) - A meteorite has hit northern Iran causing minor damage to property but there were no immediate reports of casualties, state radio has said. It said the impact sent locals in panic onto the streets in the northern town of Babol in Mazandaran province. "A meteorite which hit Babol on Friday morning caused only some minor damage to residential units," radio said, without giving further details or citing any source. It said the impact was felt up to one kilometre away. Iranians are currently mourning at least 30,000...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A meteorite has hit northern Iran causing minor damage to property but there were no immediate reports of casualties, state radio has said. It said the impact sent locals in panic onto the streets in the northern town of Babol in Mazandaran province. "A meteorite which hit Babol on Friday morning caused only some minor damage to residential units," radio said, without giving further details or citing any source. It said the impact was felt up to one kilometre away. Iranians are currently mourning at least 30,000 people killed by an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter...

'A meteorite smashed through my roof' The chances of being hit by a chunk of space rock are measured in the billions-to-one. Roy Fausset, 59, had the closest of escapes last month when what scientists now say was a meteorite crashed through his New Orleans home. I walked through my front door and it was like a mortar bomb had fallen on my house. Most space rocks burn up in the sky There was dust all over the floor of the entrance way and the two doors leading to a utility room and the powder room had been blown open....

At least 20 people are reported to have been injured after a meteorite crashed to Earth in eastern India. Reports say hundreds of people in the state of Orissa panicked when the fireball streamed across the sky. Burning fragments were said to have fallen over a wide area, destroying several houses. An official in Orissa said the authorities were assessing the damage and trying to recover what was left of the meteor. Reports from Orissa said windows rattled as the meteor passed overhead. "It was all there for just a few seconds but it was like daylight everywhere," one resident...

The Missed Story of the Millennium: The Red Planet Lives 08/27/2003 14:51 Life on Mars v Is the Truth being hidden?Since classical times, mankind has, in one form or another, postulated about whether life exists on Mars. Now that the Red Planet reaches its closest point to Earth in almost 60,000 years, it is the right time to tell a story as yet untold: that of the Frass Meteorite.The Frass Meteorite has all the ingredients of a Conspiracy Theory story, including the mysterious and unexplainable death of the son of the man who discovered it, but at the same...

Rock from space might have hit life hard 380 million years ago. 13 June 2003 JOHN WHITFIELD About 380 million years ago, a rock from space smashed into the Earth, say geologists. They believe that the impact wiped out a large fraction of life. The idea could strengthen the controversial connection between mass extinctions and impacts. Up to now, the only candidate for a link is the meteor 65 million years ago that some believe helped exterminate the dinosaurs. Signs of an earlier catastrophe coincide with a disappearance of many animals, says Brooks Ellwood of Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge:...

IF IT had hit Central London, Britain would no longer have a capital city. The force of the meteorite that hit eastern Siberia last September destroyed 40 square miles of forest and caused earth tremors felt 60 miles away. An expedition from Russia's Kosmopoisk institute has only recently reached the site in a remote area north of Lake Baikal because of bad weather and difficult terrain, the Interfax news agency said yesterday. Fragments of the meteorite had apparently exploded into shrapnel 18 miles above the Earth with the force of at least 200 tonnes of TNT. At the time, Russian...

ESA Studies Missions to Safeguard the Earth PRESS RELEASE Thursday, March 27, 2003 Early on the morning of 30 June 1908, the vast forest of western Siberia was illuminated by a strange apparition: an alien object streaking across the cloudless sky. White hot from its headlong plunge into the Earth's atmosphere, the intruder exploded about 8 km above the ground, flattening trees over an area of 2000 square kilometres. Despite the huge detonation, equivalent to a 10 megaton nuclear warhead (about 500 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb), there were few if any casualties in the sparsely...

A meteroite has hit outside of Chicago, chitting an apartment complex and causing an explosion and fire...looking on the web fo followup

At 11:51PM(Central Time) on Wed night March 26, 2003, an apparent meteorite flash was seen throughout the Midwest. Per WGN Radio AM 720, Chicago, people have seen it in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. I was eastbound on US 24, just east of Eureka, Illinois. A bright white light appeared in the NE sky, at about 60 degrees high in the sky. While falling, shades of orange and yellow were seen with the white flash. It lasted for about 3 seconds before darkening. It did NOT appear to hit the ground from my vantage point. It feel...

Meteorite 'may have hit shuttle' Nasa says a small meteorite or piece of man-made space junk may have struck the Columbia shuttle causing it to crash. Even a tiny scrap of debris grazing the shuttle could have damaged thermal tiles just enough to start a chain reaction. The comments by Milt Heflin, the space agency's flight director, cast doubt on the lead theory that a piece of foam insulation damaged the craft during blast off. "Did we take some hit? That's a possibility. Something was breached," he has told the Los Angeles Times. William Ailor, president of Aerospace Corporation, said...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 January 12 A Spherule from Outer Space Credit: Timothy Culler (UCB) et al., Apollo 11 Crew, NASA Explanation: When a meteorite strikes the Moon, the energy of the impact melts some of the splattering rock, a fraction of which might cool into tiny glass beads. Many of these glass beads were present in lunar soil samples returned to Earth by the Apollo missions. Pictured above is one...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 December 31 A Year of Assessing Astronomical Hazards Drawing Credit: Dan Durda (SWRI) Explanation: Could an asteroid destroy civilization on Earth? Mountain-sized space rocks could potentially impact the Earth causing global effects, and perhaps even be mistaken for a nuclear blast of terrestrial origin. Such large impacts are rare but have happened before. Modern telescopes have therefore begun to scan the skies for signs of approaching celestial...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 December 26 Searching for Meteorites in Antarctica Credit & Copyright: Ralph P. Harvey (CWRU), Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program, NASA, NSF Explanation: Where is the best place on Earth to find meteorites? Although meteors fall all over the world, they usually just sink to the bottom of an ocean, are buried by shifting terrain, or are easily confused with terrestrial rocks. At the bottom of the Earth,...

Earth's volcanism linked to meteorite impacts 14:31 13 December 02 Exclusive from New Scientist Print EditionSpace rocks are blamed for violent eruptions (Image: GETTY) Large meteorite impacts may not just throw up huge dust clouds but also punch right through the Earth's crust, triggering gigantic volcanic eruptions. The idea is controversial, but evidence is mounting that the Earth's geology has largely been driven by such events. This would also explain why our planet has so few impact crater remnants. Counting the number of asteroids we see in the sky suggests that over the past 250 million years, Earth should have...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 November 18 The Car, the Hole, and the Peekskill Meteorite Credit & Copyright: Pierre Thomas (LST), ENS Lyon Explanation: The Peekskill meteor of 1992 was captured on 16 independent videos and then struck a car. Documented as brighter than the full Moon, the spectacular fireball crossed parts of several US states during its 40 seconds of glory before landing in Peekskill, New York. The resulting meteorite, pictured here,...

Spectacular meteorite storm set for next week A spectacular display of shooting stars not likely to be repeated for 30 years takes place next week. The Leonid meteors generate a shower of activity every November, but this year they are predicted to whip up a storm. It will happen at around 4am on Tuesday November 19. Sky-watchers may see several brilliant shooting stars every minute on a clear night, despite a nearly full moon. The Leonids are not expected to return in such numbers until at least 2034. On the other hand, meteors, like the weather, are notoriously unpredictable, and...

Anybody else see that sucker? It was a big un! It was around Canon City. I read about another in SW Colorado last night. Is there a shower that I don't know about?

Tuesday, 27 August, 2002, 12:27 GMT 13:27 UK 'Meteorite' hits girl Siobhan Cowton: "I saw it fall from above roof height" The odds against being hit by a meteorite are billions to one - but a teenager in North Yorkshire may have had one land on her foot. Siobhan Cowton, 14, was getting into the family car outside her Northallerton home at 1030 BST on Thursday when a stone fell on her from the sky. This does not happen very often in Northallerton Siobhan Cowton Noticing it was "quite hot", she showed it to her father Niel. The family now...

Scientists find evidence of meteorite that struck Earth 3.5 billion years ago By Steve Connor Science Editor 23 August 2002 The oldest known meteorite crashed into the Earth some 3.47 billion years ago, leaving its mark in some of the world's most ancient rock formations, scientists have discovered. Although there is now no trace of the massive extraterrestrial object or its crater, geologists have identified its telltale fallout in rocks in South Africa and Australia. The researchers estimate the meteorite was 12 miles (19 kms) wide – roughly twice the size of the one that probably killed off the dinosaurs...

In the latest study of a 4.5 billion-year-old Martian meteorite, researchers have presented new evidence confirming that 25 percent of the magnetic material in the meteorite was produced by ancient bacteria on Mars. These latest results were published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The researchers used six physical properties they refer to as the Magnetite Assay for Biogenicity (MAB) to compare all the magnetic material found in the ancient meteorite -- using the MAB as a biosignature. A biosignature is a physical and/or chemical marker of life that does not occur through random processes or human intervention. "No...

Asteroid Gives Earth Closest Shave In Years by Richard Ingham Paris - June 20 (AFP) - A football-pitch-sized asteroid capable of razing a major city came within a whisker of hitting the Earth on June 14, but was only spotted three days later, scientists said Thursday. Asteroid 2002 MN, estimated at up to 120 metres (yards) long, hurtled by the Earth at a distance of 120,000 kilometers (75,000 miles), well within the orbit of the Moon and just a hair's breadth in galactic terms. It is the closest recorded near-miss by any asteroid, with the exception of a 10-metre (33-feet)...

Meteorite discovery solves German UFO sightings A mystery over widespread reports of lights in the sky over southern Germany has been solved by the discovery of a meteorite. A Bavarian farmer's wife found a 3ft wide crater in her vegetable patch with the meteorite lodged at the bottom. Munich Institute for Geology experts estimate the meteorite weighed over 100 kilos before hitting the atmosphere at speeds of almost 125,000mph. The rock is bigger than a tennis ball but can still be held in one hand. It is now at the institute of geology, where officials said it is worth a...