CCTV footage has revealed a strange flash of light that preceded a loud bang heard in Melbourne, north-east Australia overnight.
In the video, a Doreen resident was in her driveway by her car just before 9pm when there was a sudden flash of bright light followed by an explosion.
Residents from around Balwyn and Doncaster quickly took to social media to find answers.
On Thursday morning, Doreen locals told Sunrise they believed the noise was caused by a meteorite.
Australian National University astronomer Brad Tucker told 3AW the noise was likely caused by the breakup of a basketball-sized asteroid.
“A lot of people saw flashes associated with this explosion, so it’s most likely a meteor,” he said.
A Doreen, Australia man in his driveway before his neighborhood was hit by a burst of light caused by an asteroid.YouTube/7News Australia
“A little asteroid (maybe) breaks off, travels through space … and because it’s moving so fast when it hits the earth’s atmosphere, that’s the sonic boom that people hear, all this energy is released in the sky.”
Tucker said it’s not unusual for residents in just a small part of the city to see an asteroid and hear a sonic boom.
“Sometimes it’s localized, it depends on the size,” he said.
“Luminosity and explosion are all relative to size, so that gives us an indication that it might be a smaller size.”
Tucker said in this case the asteroid would likely be only 4 to 16 inches wide, about the size of a basketball.
Asteroid debris will either burn up while entering the atmosphere or fall to Earth.
Astronomers say the smaller the asteroid, the harder it is to detect.
“Anything bigger than 100 meters we’re pretty good at finding, anything over a kilometer we know, but that’s where a lot of the work happens with these very small ones,” he said.
“Sometimes we don’t know at all, like in this case, or we just know the clock out.”
Tucker said that while scientists worry about “something bigger,” it’s highly unlikely that an asteroid of similar size to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs will visit Earth.
“It happens every 50-100 million years or so,” he said.
“But even tens of meters in size can release energy equivalent to a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere.
“We have to monitor and worry about them.”
Jason Busuttil, a resident of Langwarrin outside south-east Melbourne, said he saw the meteor “heading towards Dandenong.”
“(It) looks like a train in the sky about 100 meters long,” he said.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
