Syracuse, N.Y. – A million or more years ago, a 1-ton chunk of rock escaped the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, bound for Syracuse.
The rock and Earth, both pulled in separate orbits by the sun, dodged each other for millennia.
Until just after noon Wednesday, when that meteor crashed into Earth’s atmosphere above Central New York, rattling windows, tripping earthquake detectors and scattering ancient debris as it burned at temperatures half as hot as the sun.
“It’s probably been crossing the Earth’s path countless times, until its time was up in 2020,” said Robert Lunsford, fireball report coordinator for the American Meteor Society. “The chance of a collision is infinitesimal, but if you do it several million times, it finally happens.”
Thousands of meteors hit Earth every year, but most go unnoticed because they’re too small to see and because most of the planet is ocean or uninhabited land. This week meteor explodes rarest of rare occurrences: A meteor big and brilliant enough to see during daylight, striking the sky above a densely populated region where millions of people could experience it.
“Anyone who got to see it should remember it forever, because it’s not something most people will ever get to witness,” said Zoe Learner Ponterio, manager of Cornell University’s Spacecraft Planetary Image Facility. “If you drew a 1-kilometer square in your yard, you’re only going to get a meteor to hit that space once every 50,000 years.”
Thanks to one of the cloudiest climates in the country, unfortunately, most Central New Yorkers didn’t get to witness the meteor. But it was captured on video in Western New York and Toronto, and people from Virginia to Ontario heard the deafening boom that sounded to some like gunshots or a falling tree. As one of the 181 observers who filed reports with the meteor society put it: “Scared the bejesus outta me.”
Based on those reports, the society calculated that the meteor hit the atmosphere above Lake Ontario and disintegrated just south of Rochester. NASA’s estimated trajectory shows a different path, with the meteor striking above Syracuse at 12:08 p.m. and diving southwest toward the Finger Lakes for 3 seconds before flaming out. It was just 22 miles above the ground at that point, which is a long, long way for a meteor to penetrate the atmosphere.
NASA has three meteor-tracking cameras in Ohio and western Pennsylvania that would have given a precise path, but they were off at the time.
“Meteor cameras don’t turn on until night because they’re too sensitive to the sun,” explained Bill Cooke, who tracks meteors for NASA.
This meteor was so bright that it was captured by a NASA satellite that monitors lightning. The bits of debris scattered after the meteor exploded could likely be seen on National Weather Service radar. And the sonic boom was detected in Ontario by a seismograph, the instrument that records earthquakes.
When the meteor finally got hot enough to explode, Cooke said, it released as much energy as 66 tons of dynamite.
“When it broke apart it produced a shock wave that produced the sonic boom that people heard,” he said.
The meteor was just under 3 feet across and weighed about 1,800 pounds, NASA estimated. That’s hefty as meteors go: The shooting stars seen in annual meteor showers are no bigger than small pebbles or golf balls.
Wednesday’s meteor crashed into the atmosphere at 56,000 mph.
“That’s slow for a meteor, actually,” Cooke said. “Some, like the Leonids, move at 150,000 mph.”
The relatively sluggish speed indicates that the meteor probably broke loose from the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter, about 92 million miles from Earth. That’s as far from Earth as the sun is.
As the meteor pushed through Earth’s increasingly thickening atmosphere, it reached an estimated temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. For comparison, the surface of the sun is a little less than 10,000 degrees.
Cooke said the rock – technically called a meteoroid before it hits the Earth’s atmosphere and becomes a meteor — was the color of pencil lead. As it burst into a fireball, it emitted light 100 times brighter than a full moon.
The meteor was big enough that some pieces might have stayed intact and rained down on the earth, Lunsford said.
“It’s possible that some small fragments might have landed somewhere between Rochester and Syracuse,” he said.
The pieces that fall to Earth, probably no bigger than charcoal briquets, are called meteorites. They’re black and appear burnt, because that’s exactly what they are.
“They would look pitted, similar to lava,” Lunsford said. “That’s very alien to the normal rocks you would find.”
Those alien meteorites can be valuable, and a cottage industry of meteorite-seekers hunt for them. Lunsford said the pieces would likely be scattered in an area about 25 miles in diameter at the end of the meteor’s trajectory. NASA’s rough estimate shows the meteor’s path ending at the northern tip of Cayuga Lake, while the meteor society places the endpoint about 60 miles to the west.
That’s several thousand square miles of potential debris field. Learner Ponterio, whose museum at Cornell has a collection of meteorites, said meteorite hunters shouldn’t get their hopes up.
“Finding a piece on the ground is a pretty rare occurrence, and almost always when someone thinks they found one it turns out to be something else,” she said.
Meteors strike Earth every day, and big fireballs like Wednesday’s happen somewhere in the U.S. once a month, Cooke said. But this week, that somewhere was our somewhere.
“They’re not uncommon,” Cooke said. “But if you see it, that’s a rare event.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
