When the double boom rang out in New England over the weekend, shaking homes and sending pets fleeing, questions began to flood social media.
“Did anyone else hear that boom?”
“Did anyone feel that?”
NASA let it be known over the weekend that the cause of the commotion was a meteorite, but on Monday it revealed even more surprising details.
The fireball weighed as much as an elephant, was 5 feet (1.52 meters) wide and was reaching 42,000 miles per hour (67,592.5 km/h) when it entered Earth’s atmosphere. It disintegrated on Saturday miles above New England and the energy released was equivalent to about 230 tons of TNT, according to agency estimates, which explains the explosions.
NASA revealed the astonishing details in a social media post on Monday, along with other statistics.
The meteor was made of natural material – it was not a satellite or space debris – and traveled through the atmosphere for about 26 miles (41.8 kilometers), according to NASA, before falling into Cape Cod Bay, located southeast of Massachusetts.
The agency was quick to point out that meteorites are very common, but they don’t tend to get as much viewership as this one.
“They usually occur over the ocean or unpopulated areas without witnesses, or during the day, which makes their detection difficult,” according to NASA.
At first, the event sparked widespread speculation.
The roar made some residents of Massachusetts and Rhode Island think that an earthquake had occurred or that a tree had fallen. Others said their dogs had been scared. At least one person raised the possibility that they were aliens.
A man from Peabody, Massachusetts posted that it had been a windy day, so he thought a large tree had hit his house. When he came out, he said, he found most of his neighbors on the street asking the same questions.
Several people filed reports with the U.S. Geological Survey, recording the shaking they felt at the National Seismic Information Center, agency spokesman Steve Sobie confirmed.
The agency opened an event page, based on the number of “Did you feel it?” reports. that you received on your website. But Sobie said there were no events recorded on the agency’s seismographs, meaning the shaking was not due to an earthquake.
This story was translated from English to Spanish with an artificial intelligence tool and was reviewed by an editor before publication.