NASA Fireball Camera Captures Halley's Comet Fragments Striking Earth

The Baltimore Sun has reported an interesting story about NASA having a "fireball camera" in Georgia that has captured comet fragments impacting the atmosphere of the earth. It was reportedly the brightest fireball seen in the three year history of the project. The event happened Friday, May 20, 2011 at 10:47 PM. The information was reported by a site called SpaceWeather.com.

With a little investigating, I was able to determine that the camera was part of  NASA's All Sky Fireball Network which has only four cameras at this time, but is yielding great results.

Loud Booms over Virginia Rattle Windows, Flood 911

NASA scientist  Joe Zawodny told WAVY-TV  that the window-rattling explosions in the night sky on May 10, 2011 over Virginia Beach, VA was most likely caused by a meteor breaking up in the atmosphere and producing sonic booms. He estimated the velocity of the object at 1000 mph; it's composition of iron.

Sources:
Washington Post
Daily Mail

Massive Rumbling Fireball over US and Canada

Somewhere between Cranbrook, B.C. and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a huge fireball, the size of a full moon appeared in the sky at 2:17 AM on May 14, 2011. Automated streetlights in Cranbrook reportedly shut off during the transit of the object from the south-west. Witnesses reported hearing a thunderous sound as the greenish-blue fireball faded at the end of it's 10 second jouney, which was recorded by a rooftop camera at College of the Rockies, BC. Canadian skies were said to be lit up "bright as day" and the spectacle was reported by witnesses as far south-west as Spokane, WA.

Source: The Townsman Cranbrook, BC

Living the American Dream, 10,000 Years Ago

About 10,000 years ago, the Clovis society came to an abrupt end in the geologic record, an event that corresponds with the abrupt end to a number of North American animal species. This has been a mystery. The time of the Clovis was at the end of the Ice Age during the melting of the glaciers (10,000 RCYBP). It was a period of warming and great prosperity for the Clovis, who enjoyed dining on mammoth and bison. The record of the Clovis is heavy with finely-crafted stone arrow and spear tips, and the bones of their prey. This geologic record of the culture is brief; just a few hundred years, and yet the evidence of their presence can be found throughout the United States.

After that, the geologic record contains a mystery layer, called the black mat. Above the black mat, there are no Clovis and no mammoth or American camels and other animal types. I must conclude that some event caused the Clovis to be partially or completely destroyed as a population of human beings, but who knows, maybe there is a little Clovis in all of us.

The black mat matches the signature of the remnants of a massive asteroid air burst above the Great Lakes. It is thought that a massive fireball literally set the entire North American continent on fire and so clouded the atmosphere with smoke and debris that a thousand-year cooling period ensued; called the Younger Dryas Period .

A society can develop subterranean environment technologies that will allow human beings are to survive a major asteroid or meteoroid strike over populated areas. Let’s face it; we will not be space cowboys until we figure out gravity. Human beings cannot survive in low gravity without detrimental physical effects. I will expand on that in another post when I talk about the book Gravity’s Arc, by David Darling. I am into an exploration of gravity. It’s a major mystery; one of my favorite subjects.

So with the Younger Dryas period came the decline of human civilization. It is a sad thing to contemplate, so we need to develop better technologies to deal with Armageddon. Remember, we only have a few billion years before the sun burns out. If we keep getting destroyed by asteroids, we’re never going to be able to develop the gravitational technologies that can take us to the stars. We need to get busy.

Additional sources:

• K. Kris Hirst: About.com
• Daniel Jack Chasan

Were the Clovis People Living the Original American Dream?

 Let's face it, no other American hunters in history had the blissful life of the Clovis People, who lived about 12,000 years ago.With an abundant and diverse food supply, from succulant wooly mammoth to tasty barbequed bison and an abundance of fish, the Clovis may have had a wonderful culture.

Unfortunately, they didn't have the knowledge to be able to survive an asteroid airburst. Still, I wonder if they were living the original American dream. One thing however, is obvious, the best gift to give at the holidays (whatever they were) was a genuine Clovis arrow head or spearhead. All the evidence suggests that Clovis "projectile points" (arrow heads) were quite the thing.

The worst problem caused by the air burst were massive fires that poured huge amounts of smoke into the atmosphere, blocking the sun and destroying plants that require higher temperatures more sunlight to grow. The wooly mammoths died off as did the eaters of them, the Clovis.

The laws of survival on earth still work the same way. Life needs to be protected at every level. More on the Clovis people later; I am still researching them.

Georgia Fireball Could be Meteoroid Air Burst Event

Multiple witnesses across at least 4 states reported a fireball and explosions on Friday, April 29 between 10 PM and midnight. A fireball was also reported around the same time in Florida, Alabama and the Carolina's.
Lots of sound, but where is the flash?
Numerous witnesses reported hearing a concussion in the form of a roof or exterior surface bumping sound. At least two people reported the sound of an object, like a tree limb, striking their roof. Later inspection revealed that it was not a tree limb and there was no obvious cause for the sound. A meteoroid air burst would produce this exact effect, from a bump to an earthquake. There would also have been a flash at the moment of detonation.
Sources

The Valdosta Daily Times
The Florida Times Union

Scientists Like Deer Caught in Headlights with new Asteroid Belt object

Top scientists at NASA have been unable to categorize a newly discovered Asteroid Belt object known as P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) . It appears to be the result of two or more asteroids and/or meteoroids colliding, according to sources.

This raises the question of deflected objects resulting in major Impact Events from a pool ball effect (3-dimensional, interplanetary pool). The mathematics are obviously quite complicated and more research will be needed to produce a working model of asteroid/meteoroid collisions.

April 6, 2011 -- 8:22 PM; Tullahoma, Tennessee

The NASA Meteoroid Environment Office in conjunction with the University of Tennessee Space Institute and the Georgia-based Walker County Science Center joined forces to monitor and analyze a meteoroid that was estimated to be 2 feet in diameter, 200 pounds, with a velocity of 32,400 mph (9 miles per second). The object reportedly did not explode and is thought to have broken up and rained small fragments somewhere near the Kentucky border. This announcement has triggered a search for the fragments. Happy hunting!

Source: Space Daily (SpaceDaily.com)
Article

Meteoroid Airburst, Park Forest, Illinois, March 27, 2003

If you were asleep, just before midnight in your Park Forest home, you may have been awakened by a series of explosions. At least one 13 year old boy did not wake up to the noise, but achieved some level of situational awareness when a 5 pound rock crashed through the ceiling of his room and rolled across the floor, a few feet from his bed.
In addition to the obvious physical evidence of multiple building and vehicle strikes, which were the fragments from the air burst and became meteorites upon impact, the event comes complete with video and was observed first-hand by local scientists.

Eventually, we will have injuries from these events, and we may develop a plan to predict them and give a warning to those on the ground. One positive indication is the Torino Impact Hazard Scale which is published on the NASA website. It will be sad day if an event of this type causes injury or death, before we come up with a plan to mitigate the effects and react appropriately.

Tunguska the Benchmark

     On June 30, 1908, above a remote area of Siberia, a rock from space, about half a football field in size, estimated to be travelling at 33,500 mph impacted the atmosphere of earth at an altitude of about 5 miles. Because of the particular type of rock, in terms of density and composition, the pressure of impact caused the object to detonate. It is rare for such things to happen because the conditions have to be just right, from the angle of entry to the velocity and density of the object. The result of this event produced an explosion estimated to have been an unbelievable 185 times the force of the (28 kiloton) bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.