A strange green meteor recently exploded as it descended through the sky above Australia. It produced a loud noise that startled nearby inhabitants. And a blinding flash of light that could be seen for miles.
At 9:22 p.m. local time on May 20, cameras at Cairns Airport in Queensland recorded a video of the exploding bolide. The night sky is first illuminated by a green flash in video footage. The video was posted to the airport’s Facebook page. Before being further illuminated by a white flare.
The flash may be seen in further video from smartphones, dashcams. Green Fireball’s Brilliance Captured by Cameras 370 Miles Away in Normanton. Explosion’s Echo Resonates 60 Miles Away in Croydon, Australia this indicates that the meteor detonated somewhere in the sky.
According to Brad Tucker, an astronomer at Australian National University in Canberra, the space rock was most likely relatively small. It measured between 1.6 and 3.2 feet (0.5 and 1 metres) across. Also it may have been travelling at up to 93,000 mph (150,000 km/h), he told The Guardian. He went on to say that any debris that would have hit Earth. It would have been tiny and probably still frozen.
According to the American Meteor Society, bolides are meteors that erupt in Earth’s atmosphere due to an accumulation of friction that eventually forces the space rocks to instantly fracture with enough force to produce a sonic boom.
When bolides erupt, they often produce a white or yellow light. According to Tucker, the meteor’s unusually high concentration of metals, including iron and nickel, is what gave it its unusually green flare as it detonated above Croydon.
In the atmosphere of the Earth, bolides happen fairly regularly. NASA’s Earth Observatory reports that between July 2017 and January 2022, astronomers discovered about 3,000 bolides. However, only a small number of these explosions are visible to observers on the ground each year because the majority take place above or far from inhabited regions.
Furthermore, people in Utah were startled in August 2022 by a loud explosion from a probable bolide, which most likely came from the Perseid meteor shower.
Visit CxO Global FORUM or CxO News Live for all the latest updates.
