The inside photo voltaic system is quite a bit calmer than it was 4 billion years in the past, throughout what’s often known as the heavy bombardment interval. Over the course of that violent stretch, which lasted about 500 million years, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the moon have been frequently pounded by asteroids, meteors, and different cosmic ordnance, most of the objects as large because the six-mile-wide rock that worn out the dinosaurs. Issues have gotten quite a bit quieter since then, however that’s to not say every part has gone solely nonetheless. Earth nonetheless lives inside a capturing gallery, with hundreds of objects—totaling about 48.5 tons per 12 months, in line with NASA—coming into the ambiance.
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Yesterday, a kind of area boulders exploded within the skies over Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina at 11:51 a.m EDT, in line with the Nationwide Climate Service (NWS). The sensible flash, which was accompanied by a sonic growth that many mistook for an earthquake, resulted in tons of of calls and posts to the American Meteor Society (AMS), NASA’s advisable group for reporting meteoric fireballs. In Henry County, Ga., one home was struck by particles that broke by the roof and landed contained in the residence. There have been no reported accidents.
“The Henry County Emergency Administration Company [EMA] handed alongside to us {that a} citizen reported {that a} ‘rock’ fell by their ceiling across the time of the reviews of the ‘earthquake,’” the NWS mentioned in a Fb put up. “Henry County EMA additionally reported that the thing broke by the roof, then the ceiling, earlier than cracking the laminate on the ground and stopping.”
The opportunity of one thing tumbling from the skies this week was not solely surprising. Yesterday’s occasion occurred in the course of the ongoing Bootid meteor bathe, which occurs as soon as each 6.37 years, when Earth passes by the remnants of the tail of Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke. The Bootid is only one of dozens of recognized showers the AMS lists on its web site. A lot of these occasions produce solely a superb mist of meteor fragments, seen solely at night time in darkish circumstances away from metropolis lights, and generally known as capturing stars.
Yesterday’s rock was of a decidedly better caliber, one sufficiently big to be categorized as a bolide, a meteor with sufficient mass to trigger a brilliant flash and a sonic growth because it slams into the ambiance, however too small for many of it to achieve the bottom with out being incinerated first. To qualify as a bolide, an incoming meteor should attain the brightness of Venus, which, just like the moon, is usually seen within the daytime sky. A couple of dozen bolides happen annually, in line with NASA.
Essentially the most explosive latest bolide occasion occurred over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013, when an object estimated to have measured about 65 ft., detonated within the ambiance, injuring practically 1,500 individuals and damaging 7,200 buildings. Fashionable historical past’s greatest bolide additionally struck Russia, within the celebrated Tunguska occasion of 1908, when a 350-ft. meteor flattened 830 sq. mi. of forest land.
Lesser meteoric fireworks are a lot, way more widespread than bolides. In response to the AMS, a number of thousand small fireballs erupt within the ambiance on daily basis, however “the overwhelming majority of those,” the group says, “happen over the oceans and uninhabited areas, and a very good many are masked by daylight.”
However the Henry County home that acquired hit by the latest bolide, the percentages of anyone spot—or anyone individual—being struck by area particles are vanishingly small. Barely 5% of objects that enter the ambiance survive the fires of entry and attain the floor. Roughly 70% of that floor is ocean and far of the remainder is desert or different sparsely inhabited terrain. Lastly, many of the meteorites that do strike the planet are, by the point of impression, micrometeorites—too small to do any harm in any respect. In all of recognized human historical past, actually, there is just one one that is believed to have been killed by a meteorite—an Indian bus driver who was struck whereas strolling on the campus of an engineering school within the state of Tamil Nadu on Feb. 6, 2016. That successfully places your odds of assembly the identical destiny as one within the complete variety of human beings who’ve walked the Earth because the daybreak of homo sapiens roughly 300,000 years in the past.
That’s to not say there haven’t been shut calls. On Could 1, 1860, a horse was killed by a meteorite strike in Harmony, Ohio. In 1954, an Alabama girl—whose image was revealed and story was informed within the Dec. 13, 1954 concern of LIFE journal—sustained extreme bruising to her hand and facet when a ten lb. meteorite crashed by her roof whereas she lay napping on her couch. Put yesterday’s occasion within the class of lightning strikes or shark bites—theoretically potential, extremely inconceivable, yet another factor you’ll be able to take off your fear listing.