Reports of a loud explosion reverberated across New England on a Saturday afternoon, causing confusion among police agencies and residents as they tried to determine the source of the double boom that rattled buildings in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The American Meteor Society disclosed that the thunderous noise was a result of a meteor, approximately 1 meter wide, entering the Earth’s atmosphere near the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border, located north of Boston.
NASA officials verified that the meteor was a natural celestial object, ruling out the possibility of it being a satellite or space debris. The event occurred at 2:06 p.m.
Robert Lunsford, a program monitor at the American Meteor Society, stated that numerous reports were received spanning from Delaware to Montreal, with witnesses describing hearing the double boom, feeling the ground shake, or witnessing a fireball resembling a daytime shooting star.
Lunsford mentioned that the fireball was larger than usual, approximately a yard wide, but he deemed it improbable that the meteor made impact with the ground.
According to NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel, the meteor was hurtling through space at a speed of around 120,700 km/h and likely disintegrated approximately 60 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. The agency estimated that the energy released during the fragmentation was equivalent to 300 tons of TNT, explaining the booms.
Residents in several states took to social media to report feeling their buildings shake. Various videos captured the sound of two rapid booms without any visible signs of fire or smoke.
Individuals submitted reports to the U.S. Geological Survey, noting the tremors they experienced, which were recorded by the National Earthquake Information Center. However, no seismic activity was detected on the agency’s seismographs, indicating that the shaking was not caused by an earthquake.
