Seeing meteors on the sky has probably got NASA bored already but seeing them hit the ground is different and a meteor came in like a fireball in Georgia.
- Meteroids become meteors when they come in contact with the atmosphere
- The object came from the space between Mars and Jupiter
- The meteor hit the Earth in a forest in Georgia
Meteors are nothing new and they can often be seen on the sky and become more visible as they catch fire and look like green fireballs. Now, this is the story of how meteor met Earth. The rock, which was a meteoroid at first, came from a line of asteroids which separate Mars from Jupiter. It left the line and started heading towards our planet. When the meteoroid came in contact with Earth’s atmosphere it became a meteor and lighted up into a very bright green fireball.
In a common turn of events, the story of the meteor would end here, as the fireball would soon self-destruct, at many miles above the Earth’s surface. However, this event was not common at all, as the meteor did not burn up. The object was big enough and weighed about 150 pounds.
Although the meteor had a speed of 29,000 miles per hour when the NASA team located it at 50 miles above ground, the meteor started to slow down to a speed of 9,000 miles per hour at approximately 17 miles above Locust Grove. Moving at this speed also made the meteor stop burning and slowing down to reach the Earth.
What made it slow down and stop burning, respectively, was probably the fact that the meteor was large and heavy enough. A smaller and lighter object would have burned up immediately after entering our atmosphere.
The meteor landed or, better said, hit the Earth in Georgia in a heavily wooded area. On one hand, this is a good thing as no people were in danger of being harmed by the cosmic object.
On the other hand, scientists are not very keen on starting a search to recover parts of the meteor. Given the fact that it landed in a forest that besides many trees, also has many rocks the meteor might not be interesting enough to study after all. It would be like searching for the needle in a haystack.
Image source: www.bing.com
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