Residents in five states were treated to a rare celestial spectacle Tuesday afternoon as a massive meteor streaked through the upper atmosphere, setting off a flurry of reports and ultimately a sonic boom. The event was attended by more than 200 people in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.
According to NASA, meteors are common; they usually occur over the ocean or in unpopulated areas. This particular meteor was moving at a speed of 30,000 miles per hour and traveled 117 miles through the upper atmosphere before disintegrating 27 miles above Galloway, just north of Atlantic City.
In this regard, Nicholas Samuelian, who was driving on Route 70 in Medford Lakes, said, “I didn’t know what to think at first. I’ve never seen anything like it before, so it was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.”
According to NASA, meteors travel through Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, exceeding the speed of sound, ultimately leading to sonic booms. By definition, a meteoroid is a small asteroid in space; it becomes a meteor when light is emitted as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere and begins to burn.
It is pertinent to note that a fireball is a meteor brighter than the planet Venus, and a meteorite is a fragment that survives the passage through the atmosphere and hits the ground.
Impact craters are described as a high-energy geological event that occurs over a very short period of time and creates conditions that exceed the intensity of nuclear explosions. Scientists use morphological and geophysical surveys to find anomalous structures underground. The main motive for recognizing an impact site requires evidence of shock metamorphic efforts or the presence of meteoritic components that only occur during hypervelocity impacts.
