A massive space rock lighted up the night skies above Perth, Australia, yesterday. The giant meteor exploded over Perth causing a “boom” that rattled windows and shook houses’ walls as it was heading towards the Earth. The fireball in the skies did not cause any damage even though it scared a few families living in that region.
“We saw a really bright light and felt the boom about two or three minutes afterward. [The giant meteor] shook the house, rattled the windows, it was pretty scary,” explained Robyn Garratt who lives in the Western Australian town of York.
According to an ABC report, the phones at the Department of Fire and Emergency Services started ringing at around 7:40 PM shortly after the event took place. The majority of the calls reported “strange lights raining down over Perth.”
A giant meteor exploded over Perth, Australia, lightning the night skies and causing a loud “boom”
The “boom” reported by Robyn Garratt, which rattled the windows and shook the man’s house, was created by the space rock breaking the sound barrier during its fall towards the Earth, before burning up in our planet’s atmosphere.
“When the meteorite is in space it’s traveling at anywhere between 30 and 70 kilometers per second, faster than the speed of sound. So when it hits our atmosphere it causes a sonic boom, and that’s what rattled the houses,” explained Matt Woods from the Perth Observatory.
“The reason it glows is because of the compression of the atmosphere starts to bake it, and it starts to melt. When it heats the rock entirely is when you get the rock exploding, so it’s probably come down in a few pieces,” the scientist added.
The giant meteor exploded over Perth, Australia, as the Earth’s atmosphere burned it up completely. The event happened without causing any damages, besides scaring a few people with the sonic boom it triggered when entered the atmosphere.