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Giant fireball meteor whizzes over Statue of Liberty as residents report feeling a shaking and hearing a 'boom'
NASA reports that a screaming, 34,000 mile-per-hour meteor blazed past the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor on Tuesday, incinerating itself above the city.
New Yorkers and even the residents of nearby states reported feeling an earthquake-like rumble and hearing a loud 'boom' Tuesday morning — as the bright and plunging fireball burned itself into oblivion an estimated 29 miles above midtown Manhattan.
Multiple government agencies leapt into action to identify the mysterious, rattling explosion, including NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office and the United States Geological Survey's (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center.
But NASA noted there was evidence for an alternative explanation.
'There are reports of military in the vicinity around the time of the fireball,' the space agency said, 'which could explain the shaking and sounds reported to the media.'
NASA reports that a screaming, 34,000 mile-per-hour meteor blazed past the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor on Tuesday, incinerating itself above the city. New Yorkers and even the residents of nearby states reported feeling earthquake-like rumbles and hearing a loud 'boom'
But NASA noted there was evidence for an alternative explanation. 'There are reports of military in the vicinity around the time of the fireball,' the US space agency said, 'which could explain the shaking and sounds reported to the media'
Despite NASA's caveat, however, Pentagon officials told NBC New York that neither the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), nor any other US military sensor network, had tracked anything that could explain the witness reports.
Astronomer and lead for NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office, Bill Cooke, issued a statement on the limited facts about the event that are currently known.
According to Cooke, the daylight fireball was first spotted at 11:17am local time near Greenville Yard, a freight rail yard located at the Port of New York and New Jersey.
'The fireball was first sighted at an altitude of 49 miles above Upper Bay (east of Greenville Yard),' Cooke said.
'The meteor descended at a steep angle of just 18 degrees from vertical,' he continued, 'moving a bit east of North at 34,000 miles per hour.'
The NASA official thanked amateur sky-watchers with the American Meteor Society whose data 'permitted a very crude determination of the trajectory of the meteor.'
Trackers with the nonprofit scientific group, founded in 1911, noted as many as 20 possible meteor sightings between 11:16 and 11:20 am. The society's unconfirmed fireball reports were spread across the tri-state area, from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut — and beyond into Delaware and Maryland.
'It just caught my eye: a fireball just streaming through the sky,' eyewitness Judah Bergman told local news. 'I couldn't believe it.'
Astronomer and lead for NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office, Bill Cooke, said the daylight fireball was first spotted at 11:17am local time near Greenville Yard, a freight rail yard located at the Port of New York and New Jersey: 'moving a bit east of North at 34,000 miles per hour'
'It just caught me eye: a fireball just streaming through the sky,' eyewitness Judah Bergman told the local NBC news affiliate. 'I couldn't believe it.' Above, a still from the 1998 film Armageddon, in which space rocks threaten the Earth, including the city of New York
Despite resident accounts of physical rattling and shaking along the fireball's path — reportedly from northeast New Jersey and Staten Island, New York — the USGS stated in an official statement that it recorded no evidence of an earthquake.
'An examination of the seismic data in the area showed no evidence of an earthquake. The USGS has no direct evidence of the source of the shaking,' the federal agency's National Earthquake Information Center said.
'Past reports of shaking with no associated seismic signal have had atmospheric origins,' the USGS advised, 'such as sonic booms or weather-related phenomena.'
One explanation for the presumed or alleged meteor's notably loud and earthshaking racket may have stemmed from the unusually thick summer air.
As the chief meteorologist for local affiliate WABC-TV, Lee Goldberg, noted, this July's record heat would help sound reverberate through the air.
During high temperature days, air molecules move more quickly and collide more frequently in their heated or 'excited' state — which allows the sound waves that ripple through these molecular collisions to spread more quickly and more powerfully.
NASA officials cautioned that its own assessment of the fireball sightings this Tuesday was 'uncertain' and based on only 'a few eyewitness accounts.'
'There is no camera or satellite data currently available to refine the solution,' the space agency's meteoroid office acknowledged.
Cooke's team at this NASA office, however, vowed to continue gathering information in order to confirm these witness reports, so as to finalize its investigation of the case.
No meteorite impacts or landings, at least according to NASA, were produced by Tuesday's event.