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Various newspapers, June
4, 2004
Booming meteor lights up Northwest sky
By Donna Gordon Blankinship
Associated Press Writer
SEATTLE (AP) _ A meteor that streaked across Western Washington
early Thursday morning was the most dramatic light and sound
show of its kind over the Puget Sound in decades, according
to a University of Washington astronomy lecturer who specializes
in meteorites.
"Earth is hit all of the time. What is uncommon is how
very bright this was. Most (meteoroids) burn up very high and
nobody sees them," said Toby Smith, who has been in the
UW astronomy department for about 10 years.
A meteoroid is what the object is called above the atmosphere.
The light streak it creates when it bounces off or passes through
the atmosphere is called a meteor. If it hits the ground, it
becomes a meteorite.
Witnesses along a 60-mile swath from Tacoma to Whidbey Island
and as far as 260 miles to the east said the sky lit up brilliantly
at 2:40 a.m. Thursday, and many reported booming sounds as if
from one or more explosions.
The bright light can be attributed to the speed at which the
object hit the atmosphere. The sonic boom that followed about
a minute or two later can be explained by the size of the object
falling out of the sky, Smith said, adding that it's rare for
meteors to be heard. "This tells us it was a relatively
substantial piece," he said.
One of Smith's colleagues, Don Brownlee, said his son saw the
bright light and then the whole family heard the sonic boom
from inside their houseboat. "We heard this incredible
noise that sounded like a truck landing on the dock," Brownlee
said.
Geoff Chester, a spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory in
Washington, D.C., said meteors are not rare, but many fall over
the ocean and are never seen. "For the average person,
it could be a once- or twice-in-a-lifetime kind of event,"
Chester said, adding that in the past 40 years of actively watching
the night sky because of his job and interests, he has only
seen three or four meteors.
Brownlee said he believes it likely the object did make it to
the ground without disintegrating, but it could be as hard to
find as a shower of gravel over several square miles. It could
also be as big as a car, but Brownlee noted, "The bigger
these things are, the rarer they are."
Scientists are interested in recovering meteorites because they
offer a glimpse of the kind of material that formed the Earth
and the other planets, without the impact of the intervening
4.5 billion years of life inside an atmosphere.
"Some of these objects are as old as the solar system itself.
That's why geologists and astrogeologists want to get their
hands on as many as possible," Chester said.
Earlier speculation that the flash in the sky could have been
space junk rather than natural material falling through the
atmosphere was discounted by Chester, whose department tracks
man-made materials orbiting the earth. He said nothing in orbit
large enough to make such a bright light show was in the vicinity
when the meteor was reported.
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