Reports of large meteor in the Midwest

[Shadoewolf]

News reports are coming in from Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio of a huge flash of light and earth shaking booms. They're saying it was a meteor. My question...how does a meteor that size get THIS close and we have no warning??! 

[Ali]

I saw the sky light up as I was driving. It freaked me out a little.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

1 hour ago, Shadoewolf said:

My question...how does a meteor that size get THIS close and we have no warning??! 

I'm not an astronomer or a physicist, but if I understand correctly, the magnitude of the flash of light and any sound is greater than most people would expect based on the size of the meteor. Bright, beautiful "falling stars" in a predictable meteor shower can be caused by tiny grains that came off a comet tail years ago. I don't know how large this one was, but it may be smaller than you would expect. 

I'll be very interested to hear more about this. Thanks for the heads-up!

[Shadoewolf]

We have a blanket on our front window to hold in heat so I didn't see it but heard it. Thought it was thunder. The astronomer from Michigan State said it could have been the size of a small car. Or not a meteor at all but space junk. Be interesting to see how this pans out. Looks like Oldest will have an interesting day in her Astronomy class on Thurs!

[singsingsing]

I didn't see or feel it, but it shook my grandparents' house. They said it sounded like two loud bangs against the side the house, and their cat jumped up and took off like a shot. Lots of reports from other people in my area who saw the flash and felt their houses shake. One girl said her ears popped! Pretty freaky.

[FaithAndReason]

Saw it on the way home tonight. Amazing and almost made me wreck the car.

 

[Howl]

Wow. Amazing that some of you got to experience this directly, but glad you are safe! 

Just watched an episode of Nova on the DVR titled Day the Dinosaurs Died.  The asteroid that caused a pretty much instant world-wide dinosaur extinction was 7 miles across and a geological strata laid down worldwide from material thrown up from the impact is called the K-T Boundary.  There was an essentially instant mass extinction of over 75% of the species existing on earth.  This was an amazing show and as you can tell, it was all new to me. Also got introduced to some ginormous species of dinos that I'd never heard of before. 

I did a little more googling and the Chelyabinsk asteroid that came in over Siberia in 2013 was estimated to have been about 20 meters (~60 ft) wide and going about 40,000 mph when it hit earth's atmosphere and generated a massive shock wave.  As noted by @WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?, it doesn't have to be big to have an incredibly large impact. 

The Tunguska event (meteoroid) of 1908 flattened around 800 square miles of remote forest in eastern Siberia. 

Quote

wiki: The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on earth in recorded history. Studies have yielded different estimates of the meteoroid's size, on the order of 60 to 190 metres (200 to 620 feet), depending on whether the body was a comet or a denser asteroid. 

Anyway, the takeaway from the Chelyabinsk incident is, if you see a giant flash, get down and away from any windows the instant you see the flash.  Almost everyone of the 1500 people who sought medical attention in the Chelyabinsk area was cut by flying glass.  Everyone rushed to the window to see what caused the flash and were injured when the following shock wave broke the glass. 

Science! Geology!  Earth! Space!  I'm stoked!