A blinding fireball streaked across the New England sky on Saturday afternoon, triggering a massive, mysterious boom that rattled residents across multiple states. NASA has now confirmed the source of the commotion: a meteor violently breaking apart high in the Earth's atmosphere.
The dramatic event occurred at approximately 2:06 p.m. EDT on Saturday. According to a post on X by NASA, the spectacle was caught by numerous eyewitnesses on the ground and detected from space by NOAA's GOES-19 satellite, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
Scientists determined that the space rock fragmented at an altitude of roughly 40 miles (64 km) directly over northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire.
The breakup was incredibly violent. NASA estimates that the energy released during the meteor's disintegration was equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT.
Because meteors travel far faster than the speed of sound, they generate intense pressure waves as they compress the air around them while burning up. When the meteor finally fractured under the extreme pressure, it created a massive sonic boom that reverberated loudly across the entire region.
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