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posted by martyb on Thursday November 16 2017, @02:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the Rudolph-getting-pre-Christmas-exercise dept.

Fireball that streaked across Phoenix sky was a meteor, astronomers say

Astronomers say the bright light that streaked across the night sky Tuesday was "almost certainly" a meteor. The city of Phoenix captured the illumination on one of its observation cameras and posted it to Twitter. In the video, a large, glowing bulb appears in the top-right frame and then fades out in three seconds. A smaller light can be seen in the lower portion of the frame, off in the horizon. It happened around 8:30 p.m.

[...] "Given the speed and everything, this was almost certainly a meteor rather than a piece of space junk," said Laurence Garvie, curator of Arizona State University's Center for Meteorite Studies. Specifically, the meteor was a "bolide" — a type of fireball that explodes in a bright terminal flash, according to the American Meteor Society. "This thing wasn't huge. I'm going to guess about 5 feet across. It broke up quite quickly," Garvie said.

Four fireball meteors flashed across the sky over the U.S. and Europe on Tuesday night (archive)

Three other meteors kept the American Meteor Society and the International Meteor Organization very busy on Tuesday night. At 8:40 p.m., a fireball lit up the sky over southern Ohio. Later in the night, two meteors zoomed over Europe — one over Germany and the other over France. More than 1,300 people sent reports to the organizations, making last night the busiest night they've ever had since the online reporting forms were launched.

It looks like the fireballs were at least somewhat related — the Taurid meteor shower peaked on Saturday, and Taurid meteors are still shooting across the sky. "Associated with the comet Encke, the Taurids are actually two separate showers, with a Southern and a Northern component," the American Meteor Society wrote on Wednesday morning. "Both branches of the Taurids are most notable for colorful fireballs and are often responsible for an increased number of fireball reports from September through November."


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 17 2017, @04:47PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 17 2017, @04:47PM (#598237) Journal

    Seriously, after reading that entire series, I realized for the first time how bleak of a world view Atheism is.

    Let us keep in mind that an implicit assumption of the argument for human extinction in this thread was that the aliens had superior ethics or morality to humans and were operating on that basis. If they aren't, then such arguments become irrelevant. Why would they care that a perfectly good "class M" planet is irradiated, much less care enough to kill off the apes doing the irradiating?

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday November 17 2017, @05:49PM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday November 17 2017, @05:49PM (#598264)

    Who said anything about aliens having superior ethics? Maybe the aliens just don't like us, and find us annoying, and want to exterminate us because of that, and because they think it's funny. After all, we've done exactly the same ourselves, so we can't claim any kind of moral high ground. Just look at people who use magnifying lenses on ants; we could be the same to an alien race. Besides, extermination by asteroid is probably quicker and less painful than being forced to fight each other to the death, which is something else that many humans find entertaining.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 17 2017, @10:55PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 17 2017, @10:55PM (#598441) Journal

      Most likely, some advanced alien race has determined