Record meteorite hit Norway (caught on camera too)

Aftenposten (Norway) ^ | 06/09/2006 | Nina Lødemel/Jonathan Tisdall

[mwilli20]

As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima. ...

At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of Troms and the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire taking several seconds to travel across the sky. ...

"I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a tail of smoke," Bruvold told Aftenposten.no. He photographed the object and then continued to tend to his animals when he heard an enormous crash.

"I heard the bang seven minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a solid charge of dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away," Bruvold said. ...

If the meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb. Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare it to the (atomic) bomb," Røed Ødegaard said.

[Nathan Zachary]

You can be sure Tom Bearden will have an explanation. It was the Soviets playing with Scalar weapons again. Those pesky soviets.

[1FreeAmerican]

Thanks!!! Looking forward to the info.

[DBrow]

It was on a weekend at night, not even a semi was out.

Newsweek blamed the strike on the President- all that money for NASA and we get blindsided by a ROCK?

But, the courts then allowed the teaching of Craterism in schools.

[Nathan Zachary]

The stars and milky way are clearly visable all the time, but are especially nice around August. we can even see a bit of the northern lights sometimes. It's almost like 3-d its so clear and space so black in contrast. Makes you feel very small.

[El Gato]

How can the farmer hear the sound seven minutes later???
...
If the blast was the size of Hiroshima, shouldn't there by a sizeable crater somewhere?

Not for an airburst, which is what these sorts of things usually do. Seven minutes would imply an event about 90 miles away.

[RadioAstronomer]

Glad to be of service. :-)

[Nathan Zachary]

You can even see satelites whizzing by. And of course the space station on occasion. Nobody pays attention to that anymore, although you can visit the nasa web site and figure out what time to look for it.

[Robert A Cook PE]

So, if a green meteor kills all the life on earth, is really environmentally friendly?

[timer]

Were you around in 1972 or so when that 13 ft meteorite glanced off the atmosphere? It came in over Utah and exited over Alberta. My sister, on a camping trip, got pictures of it. Popular Science or Scientific American had an article on large bolides some years ago. They are fairly common but most occur over the ocean. Even a solid impact disappears as a splash/wave. Once made a conical algore dunce cap as ozone protector and meteorite shield for my dem-sister in law, you know, the santa claus type that will believe any fairy story...

[Robert A Cook PE]

So, global warming is from an increased rate of meteor/meteorite impacts that are heating the atmosphere? 8<)

[El Gato]

The image looks very similar to a bolide I saw burn up last fall. But that was at night. I was looking away from it, when the houses in the direction I was looking lit up. It much brighter than the illumination of a streetlight about 1 lot away from where I was at the time. It was a very short flash, but when I looked in the direction it came from, expecting to see a mushroom cloud, marking the demise of Dallas to tell the truth. I saw something which looked very similar to this photo.

I went right back into the house and posted about it here Others saw it too. But unlike this instance, I heard no sound.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Fairy tales?

Well, small meteor tails would have to gnome under the dwarf heading.....

[El Gato]

Even two minutes is almost too far for anything less than a volcano-sized boom.

True, but something "comparable to Hiroshima" is larger than most volcano sized booms. I do believer you could hear a Hiroshima sized bomb 90 miles away, and it might sound like, or at least as loud, as a stick of dynamite a klick away. I would think it would be somewhat lower pitched and longer lasting though, just like far away thunder sounds different, as well as being softer, than nearby lightening. In this case, the major explosion may have occurred in the atmosphere, with only a small chunk hitting the mountain.

[Always Independent]

There was a movie about atomic weapons that ran film scenes of a number of the high near space detonations.

[MinuteGal]

I wanna see a photo of the mountainside where the metorite allegedly hit (if the mountain is still there, that is).

Leni

[3niner]

"7 minutes later, though? That would indicate he was something like 2500 miles away, no?"

No, it would be between 80 and 90 miles. Sound takes about 5 seconds to travel 1 mile, through the air. 7 x 60 / 5 = 84

[RightWhale]

The thing about the hundred or two hundred meteor showers with names is that they are named for the constellation the appear to come out of and due to planetary orbit characteristics they each occur on schedule, that is at the same time each year. It is possible for the same swarm to be seen as two different showers if the earth's orbit intersects the orbit of the swarm at two points.

[RegulatorCountry]

" saw one that lit up the entire countryside like daylight when it detonated, and the glowing smoke trail lasted over 5 minutes."

I was in FL quite a bit while I was in college, and once went over to watch a Challenger launch. The smoke trail from the larger meteors or fireballs that I saw that night looked nearly identical to the very high altitude contrail from Challenger, even down to the odd, zigzag pattern it made as it spread out and dissipated. As far as the colors, there were a few moments of what might be called a greenish color, but to my recollection, the predominant color that I perceived was more to the red end of the spectrum. The smaller meteors looked like the classic "shooting star" that you can occasionally see on just about any clear night if you look long enough, which are to me the same color as stars, blue-white.

[El Gato]

Looks like an airplane contrail to me:

Not to me it doesn't. It looks just like the meteor trail I saw last November. That one, just like this one, and unlike airplane contrails (Flight 800 being an exception) was accompanied by a short very bright flash of light. What makes even this image different from an aircraft contrail is the thick spot in the middle. A contrail is thickest right behind the aircraft, and of course moves with the aircraft, rather than disappearing in the middle of the sky. Aircraft contrails can end somewhat abruptly if the aircraft changes altitude into an area where the conditions are not right for contrail formation.

[El Gato]

Since it did not hit the ground and create a new crater, how can the nonexplosive force be compared to an atomic bomb?

What makes you think it has to hit the ground to explode? Most meteors don't hit the ground, and many of those still explode from atmospheric heating. All that kinetic energy has to go somewhere.