Asteroid Strike

SPACE WEATHER -
11/15/07 -
Something strange is happening in the atmosphere above Africa and researchers have converged on Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss the phenomenon. Scientists are converging on Ethiopia this week to discuss a new and strange form of space weather: ion plumes, which form during geomagnetic storms. Remarkably, the source of these plumes may be somewhere over Africa. "The plumes appear during geomagnetic storms and they can interfere with satellite transmissions, airline navigation and radio communications." Indeed, it is their effect on GPS signals that led to the discovery of plumes over North America just a few years ago. "Many believe the source of the plumes is near Earth's magnetic equator. Africa is a great place to check this possibility because the magnetic equator passes directly over the sub-Sahara." Just one problem: "There aren't enough sensors in Africa to study the phenomenon." Ion plumes inhabit a layer of Earth's atmosphere called the "ionosphere." It is a broad region 85 km to 600 km above ground level where ultraviolet radiation from the sun knocks electrons off atoms and molecules, creating a layer of ionized gas or "plasma" surrounding our entire planet. As ham radio operators have known for more than 100 years, the ionosphere can bend, distort, reflect and even absorb radio waves. Plumes amplify these effects.

Comet Holmes - University of Hawaii astronomers have measured the diameter of Comet 17P/Holmes' atmosphere of dust and gas: 1.4 million kilometers. This makes the exploding comet bigger than the sun and now the largest object in the solar system. Not surprisingly, the comet is visible to the naked eye; with only a backyard telescope you can watch its gigantic debris cloud expand from night to night. (Comet 17P/Holmes' diaphanous atmosphere of dust and gas, which is what the astronomers measured, contains less mass than a typical asteroid. In spite of its great size, Comet Holmes is a lightweight that won't be deflecting the orbits of planets or causing any other such catastrophes.)

11/1/07 -
Comet 17P/Holmes has been relentlessly expanding since its explosion on Oct 23rd and now it spans an angle in the sky almost half as wide as the full Moon. Actually, the comet is even bigger than it looks. While the Moon is a mere 240 thousand miles away, Comet Holmes is 150 million miles from Earth. The comet's physical diameter is thus seven times wider than the planet Jupiter - and it is still expanding. (photo / sky map)

SOUTH DAKOTA - 10/25/07 - A large object was seen falling in the southeast sky Thursday morning, leading to speculation among some that it was a meteor. Law officers in the Sioux Falls area spotted the brilliant object falling to Earth at about 7:50 a.m. It left a wide trail as it descended. Though it wasn't known what the object was, meteor activity right now is high. A major shower (the Orionids) is active most of the month along with several minor showers, reaching maximum activity on Oct. 21. The Orionids are actually trail debris left over from Haley's Comet. Orionids meteors are visible from many parts of the country.
In the Puget Sound region of Washington this week, a motorist reported seeing a streak of light, then a flash, at 6:30 in the morning, according to a report from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Comet Holmes - Astronomers around the world agree, Comet 17P/Holmes is ONE OF THE STRANGEST THINGS EVER TO EXPLODE IN THE NIGHT SKY. It's a comet, yet it looks like a planet with a golden core and a green atmosphere. Comet Holmes shocked sky watchers with a spectacular eruption, brightening almost a million-fold from 17th to 2.5th magnitude in a matter of hours. The comet is now visible to the naked eye - even from light polluted cities - high in the northern sky after sunset. The golden hue of Holmes' core is probably the color of sunlight scattered by comet dust, while the green fringe likely signifies an atmosphere rich in diatomic carbon and cyanogen (substances found in many green comets). There are reports that the fuzzball is expanding and taking on a lopsided shape - possibly the first signs of a tail. Exploding Comet 17P/Holmes is now larger than Jupiter. The diaphanous and curiously spherical cloud surrounding the comet's core is now large enough to swallow the King of Planets! It's gotten so big, in fact, that many observers say they can see it without a telescope.

10/25/07 -
Comet 17P/Holmes is undergoing a spectacular eruption - The 17th-magnitude comet has brightened by a factor of 500,000 or more during the past 24 hours becoming a naked eye object in the evening sky. This may signify a breakup of the comet's core or a rich vein of ice suddenly exposed to sunlight - no one knows. Look for a yellow 2.5th-magnitude fuzzball in the constellation Perseus after sunset. ("2.5th magnitude" means a little dimmer than the stars of the Big Dipper.) At present the comet looks more like a star than a comet; it does not have a discernable tail, but it might grow one as the outburst continues.

10/12/07 -
IOWA - 10/10/07 - Around 2 p.m. Wednesday, in Sioux City, the Woodbury County Communications Center received reports of something falling from the sky. Callers talked about a "fire ball." Officials may never know if the flaming object shooting through the sky Wednesday afternoon was in fact a meteor. "We can't confirm at all what it is. There's suspicion that it was a meteorite, but we have no confirmation whatsoever." Reports of meteor sightings were made from Sergeant Bluff to Sioux County.

MORE METEORS-
MINNESOTA - 10/3/07 - A flaming object over Minnesota skies Wednesday afternoon may have been a meteor. Shortly after 2 p.m., people across the Twin Cities reported seeing a "metallic" object or "flaming ball" falling from the sky. Broadcasters and emergency dispatchers got hundreds of calls from people who saw the object traveling from the northeast to the southwest. Residents of Lyon County in far southwestern Minnesota reported a loud boom that might have been connected with the sightings in the Twin Cities. A man who lives near the town of Amiret says it shook his house and sounded like a sonic boom from an F-14 breaking the sound barrier at close range.
Coincidentally, at the same time, drivers in the Twin Cities metro were dodging debris in the middle of Interstate 94. Some drivers said the debris fell from the sky shortly after 2:00 p.m. Wednesday. The debris spread across two lanes when a semi truck ran over the small pile around 2:30 p.m. A transportation worker arrived on the scene at 2:45 p.m. and swept the debris to the shoulder. As of 3:15pm, the Federal Aviation Administration has had no reports of anything falling of or from any planes in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Authorities said the debris that fell on the Interstate was an unrelated incident, apparently a pallet that fell off a vehicle, and not connected to the meteor. (photo)
IOWA - 10/3/07 - several residents reported sightings of fireballs in the sky in northwestern Iowa, especially near Sioux City.

AUSTRALIA - 10/2/07 - phones rang overnight with reports of a UFO sighting in Melbourne. People from Lilydale to Mt Eliza and Richmond to St Albans called about 9:45pm to say they had seen an amazing bright blue light in the sky with a long blue trail. It was, in fact, a meteor or Bolide burning up in the atmosphere. The meteor entered the atmosphere over north-east Victoria and travelled towards South Australia. "As the Earth moves around the sun in its orbit it sweeps up this sort of material every day. However, not much is larger than a grain of sand. This one however was bigger, probably the size of a tennis ball." The meteor was moving up to 72km a second.

10/2/07 -
FINLAND - a light phenomenon seen over much of northern and eastern Finland on Friday night was a meteor - the BRIGHTEST SEEN IN THE COUNTRY IN MORE THAN 30 YEARS. It was a superbolide, a fireball more than 100 times brighter than a full moon. The fireball was apparently caused by a space rock striking the atmosphere over Northern Ostrobothnia and then exploding over Finland. The rock may have weighed some 200 kilogrammes. However it was not clear on Saturday whether any meteorites fell to the ground. The dazzling 'shooting star' spurred worried telephone calls to emergency centres in various parts of Finnish Lapland, as far apart as Kemi, Enontekiö and Ivalo. (photo)

ALASKA - State Troopers are looking into reports of something - possibly a meteorite - seen over Kodiak on Tuesday, September 25 about 6:45 a.m. Whatever it was people saw Tuesday morning, it doesn't appear to have been was an airplane. No emergency beacon went off and no debris has been found. It got so bright, one person thought a helicopter was shining a light on them. There were reports that meteorites were seen over Chiniak around that time. The Coast Guard says an HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Air Station Kodiak made both low- and high-level sweeps of the area and found no scarring on the land, impact crater or fire.

SPACE WEATHER-
9/25/07 -
PERU METEOR IMPACT - Many theories floated around last week in the first few days after the crater was created in Peru, but some tests are in, and the crater outside a Peruvian town near Lake Titicaca was caused by a meteorite, not a mud volcano, a crashed American satellite, a Chilean missile attack or “a lake of sedimentary deposit.” Tests confirmed that the crater contained telltale magnetic fragments of a meteorite, and Peru’s Geophysics Institute recorded a large tremor in the area at the moment of impact. The mystery illness is probably not due to “panspermic alien microbes” or other space-based bacteria, as much as some had hoped or feared. The illness was likely the result of inhaling arsenic fumes. The meteorite created the gases when the object’s hot surface met an underground water supply tainted with arsenic, scientists said. Numerous arsenic deposits have been found in the subsoils of southern Peru. The naturally formed deposits contaminate local drinking water. Only 30 people were sickened, not the hundreds as previously estimated. (photo)

9/20/07 -
PERU - Scientists are perplexed by the meteorite strike in Peru near Lake Titicaca that has left a 20-metre-wide crater and is reported to have produced fumes that made up to 200 people sick. A team of scientists found no radiation at the crash site and confirmed that a fallen satellite did not create the crater. Sulphur, arsenic or other toxins that melted in the extreme heat produced by the meteorite strike might have caused the illnesses that struck the local population. "What an amazing story ... I've never heard of any such extreme health effects associated with a meteorite fall before. [But] it's possible that gases could have been released due to effects of heat and pressure on disrupted rocks under the crater." Possible contenders include sulphur, sulphur dioxide, chlorine, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. According to meteorite experts, this appears to be a unique event. No other meteorites have been recorded releasing toxic gases. "Getting hit on the head by one wouldn't be good, but I've never heard of any adverse health effects related to gases released by meteorites before. There's something not quite right about this."
Based on reports of fumes emanating from the crater, some scientists actually suspect that the event could have been some kind of geyser-like explosion rather than a meteorite impact. "Statistically, it's far more likely to have come from below than from above." The noxious fumes that have supposedly sickened curious locals who went to examine the crater would seem to indicate hydrothermal activity, such as a local gas explosion, because "meteorites don't give off odors." "Many of the reported features of the crater ("boiling water," sulphurous fumes, etc.) point to a geological mechanism of the crater formation." It's not impossible that the crater was left by a meteorite, but if so, then the impact object most likely was small, based on the size of the crater. It would also probably have been a metal meteorite, because those are the only kind of small meteorites that don't burn up as they plummet through Earth's atmosphere. Small stony meteorites rarely make it to the surface. Because no one actually saw anything impact at the crater site, it's hard to say whether a space rock was involved because they are often deceptive as to where they will land. (video of impact crater)

9/19/07 -
Scores ill in Peru 'meteor crash' - Hundreds of people in Peru have needed treatment after an object from space - said to be a meteorite - plummeted to Earth in a remote area. The object left a deep crater after crashing down over the weekend near the town of Carancas in the Andes. People who have visited the scene have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea after inhaling gases. A team of scientists is on its way to the site to collect samples and verify whether it was indeed a meteorite. "It [the object] is buried in the earth...A bull is dead and some other animals are already sick." The incident began on Saturday night, when people near Carancas in the Puno region, some 1,300km (800 miles) south of Lima, reported seeing a fireball in the sky coming towards them. The object then hit the ground, leaving a 30m (98ft) wide and 6m (20ft) deep crater. The crater spewed what officials described as fetid, noxious gases. An engineer from the Peruvian Nuclear Energy Institute said no radiation had been detected from the crater and ruled out the fallen object being a satellite. "It is a conventional meteorite that, when it struck, produced gases by fusing with elements of the terrain." (photo)
Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized. Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene. "Boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby. Residents are very concerned." Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor." Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.
Tuesday, scientists who went to the town of Carancas in the Region of Puno, Peru, have confirmed that the glowing object which fell from the sky on Saturday afternoon was indeed a meteorite. A chondrite meteorite had caused the 17 meter (55 foot) wide and 5 meter (16 foot) deep crater when it landed on earth. It was reported that the water would be drained out of the crater to establish the exact size of the hole that was made by the chondrite meteorite. The chondrite was not radioactive and did not have any toxic gases or substances which could be harmful to people's health. On the other hand, it had not yet been established if the water supply in the province of Chucuito had been contaminated or not.

SOLAR WEATHER -
8/23/07 -
Solar waves make earth ring like a bell - Sounds generated deep in the fiery depths of the Sun make Earth, its atmosphere, and even its magnetic field ring like many cosmic bells. There are distinct tones that are thought to be generated by energy and pressure waves in the Sun. Now, researchers have identified these same tones in the Earth's seismic data, and even in induced voltages in ocean cabling. The vibrations in the Sun have two causes: pressure waves and gravity waves, which are referred to as p-mode and g-mode, respectively. Scientists hope to use the g-mode waves to study the interior of the Sun, in the same way that seismic data can provide an insight into the inner workings of Earth. Data from the Ulysses mission provides clues as to how the sounds reach Earth.The vibrations are picked up by the magnetic field at the Sun's surface. The solar wind then carries the field into interplanetary space, where space probes like Ulysses can pick up the signal. The solar wind also interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, causing it to vibrate in sympathy. From our magnetic field, the signal is picked up by our many technological systems, as well as the planet itself. The tones are far beyond the edge of human hearing, some 12 octaves below the lowest detectable note. While orchestras tune up to the A above middle C, at around 440 Hertz, the Earth rings at a much more stately 100-5000microHz. That is one vibration every 278 hours, or 11.5 days.

METEORS -
FINLAND - 9/28/07 - a light phenomenon seen over much of northern and eastern Finland on Friday night was a meteor - the BRIGHTEST SEEN IN THE COUNTRY IN MORE THAN 30 YEARS. It was a superbolide, a fireball more than 100 times brighter than a full moon. The fireball was apparently caused by a space rock striking the atmosphere over Northern Ostrobothnia and then exploding over Finland. The rock may have weighed some 200 kilogrammes. However it was not clear on Saturday whether any meteorites fell to the ground. The dazzling 'shooting star' spurred worried telephone calls to emergency centres in various parts of Finnish Lapland, as far apart as Kemi, Enontekiö and Ivalo. (photo)

ALASKA - 9/25/07 - State Troopers are looking into reports of something - possibly a meteorite - seen over Kodiak on Tuesday, September 25 about 6:45 a.m. Whatever it was people saw Tuesday morning, it doesn't appear to have been was an airplane. No emergency beacon went off and no debris has been found. It got so bright, one person thought a helicopter was shining a light on them. There were reports that meteorites were seen over Chiniak around that time. The Coast Guard says an HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Air Station Kodiak made both low- and high-level sweeps of the area and found no scarring on the land, impact crater or fire.

8/17/07 -
CALIFORNIA - 8/11/07 - 12:09 am - Representatives with the Sonora Police Department and both the Tuolumne and Calaveras County Sheriff's Departments say they fielded numerous calls early in the morning in regards to a "loud boom," and "structures shaking." There were several calls from residents who reported seeing "a blue light," just before the "loud boom." The incident reportedly occurred at 12:09am. The Police Department notes that it also received a call from a resident in Tuolumne, in which a female reported seeing what she thought was fireworks, and then something spiraling over her house. Early indication from the law enforcement agencies is that the loud boom was somehow the result of a meteor shower.

INDIA - August 1, 2007 - 8:45 pm - Hotipur (Sangrur) village near Khanauri hit the headlines when a meteorite fell in the fields on Wednesday night, leaving many villagers baffled. The police have taken possession of the 8-cm meteorite to hand it over to a three-member team of Geological Survey of India. Curious villagers queued up in the fields to see the "heavenly object", while the farmer, who was the only witness to the fall of the "fireball", said, "I got scared of the big fireball that was coming my way at 8:45 pm on Wednesday night. I ran for cover as I felt that it will fall on me." I rushed home and decided not to tell anyone about it. Yesterday morning, I gathered some courage and went to see the spot and found a rock-like object lying in the mud. It was then that I informed the villagers about it, who felt that it was a heavenly object." There was no crater at the spot where the fireball fell. [ This event may be a hoax as the object, weighing 235 gms, which has small holes in it, appears to be a mud scrubber used for cleaning the feet; no crater has been formed at the spot where it was reported to have fallen; and the crop sown in the field has not suffered any damage.]

IOWA - July 26, 2007 - 5:30AM - A Dubuque woman said she is lucky to be alive after a 50 pound chunk of white ice crashed through the roof of her home, landing about 15 feet away from where she was standing. She said it sounded like a bomb exploded when the massive ball of ice hit her roof. It's unclear where the ice came from. Airport officials said it is possible the ball of ice fell from an airplane flying over Dubuque, but that ice is usually blue. (photo)
Other large chunks of ice fell from the sky in this northeast Iowa city, tearing through nearby trees. Authorities were unsure of the ice's origin but have theorized the chunks either fell from an airplane or naturally accumulated high in the atmosphere - both RARE occurrences. Residents, who live a block away from where the chunk crashed through the roof, heard a loud "whoosh" coming through the trees. They discovered several large chunks of ice in front of their home and some smaller ones in the yard and in the street. "I could see where branches were shredded, which told me it was definitely coming out of the sky." They estimated the original chunk of ice was the size of a basketball. "It was pure white. The main parts I picked up were very smooth." Airplanes sometimes accumulate ice on their edges in certain atmospheric conditions, including high altitude and extreme moisture. The moisture involved in such a scenario could have come from the tops of strong thunderstorms, however, Dubuque had clear skies at the time the ice fell. "There was nothing unusual going on." A professor of geography and geology has studied the phenomenon of large chunks of ice falling from a clear sky. He said it's possible the ice could have been a megacryometeor - "similar to a hailstone, but without the thunderstorm." A research team has documented more than 50 possible megacryometeor cases during the past five years. Some involve ice chunks the size of microwave ovens. Most megacryometeor sightings have occurred in coastal areas, where atmospheric turbulence helps keep ice suspended long enough to grow into large chunks. The research team speculates the phenomenon could be linked to global warming, suggesting that climate change might make the tropopause portion of the atmosphere colder, moister and more turbulent. "But those don't typically happen in the summer time. It seems like they are mostly associated with the passage of passing cold fronts."
Last January, a 200-pound chunk of ice streaked through the clear Florida sky and landed in the back seat of a really nice red Ford Mustang. The car was totaled and when a local television station tried to interview the Hillsborough County owner, he said he didn’t want to talk about it. On June 26, 1985, in Hartford, Conn., a 1,500-pound slab of ice, six feet long and eight inches thick flattened a picket fence. The ground shook with the impact. A 13-year-old boy and his friend were standing 10 feet away when it happened. Meteorologists speculate that these chunks of ice form naturally like hail or fall off airplanes as they prepare to land. But nobody really knows where the stuff comes from. "There you are, minding your own business when something comes down on you from out of the sky like Judgement Day. And there’s nothing you can do about it."

COLUMBIA - July 6, 2007 - the sky really was falling over South America, when an incoming object broke apart in the lower atmosphere with a trio of ferocious explosions that shattered windows and shook the ground violently. Moments later, stones rained from the sky and pelted homes in the poor barrios surrounding the city of Cali, Colombia. After a few days of searching, meteor hunters rounded up and purchased several small pieces — some of which had smashed through the roofs of homes — totaling about 270 grams (10 ounces). The hunters estimate that the Cali event must have dropped fragments far more massive than what they were able to collect. Unfortunately, it all ended up in dense cane fields and will never be found. And although the recovered “hammer stones” turned out to be a rather common type of chondritic (rocky) meteorite, they’re already fetching thousands of dollars per gram among meteoritic aficionados. (photo)

SPACE WEATHER -
7/27/07 -
A severe dust storm on Mars, which has been darkening skies and causing a solar energy crisis for NASA's Mars rovers, refuses to die down. Clouds of dust are now visible in backyard telescopes and Mars is beginning to resemble a orange billiard ball as all of its underlying surface markings are hidden from view. The storm is already a month old and no one knows when it will subside.

7/16/07 -
A new project known as Galaxy Zoo is calling on members of the public to log on to its website and help classify one million galaxies. The hope is that about 30,000 people might take part in a project that could help reveal whether our existing models of the Universe are correct. Computers users undergo a three-minute online tutorial and are then allocated a series of images and asked to decide whether each one shows a spiral or an elliptical galaxy. If it's a spiral galaxy, they're asked to decide which way it appears to be rotating. "These images were taken by a robotic telescope and processed automatically, so the odds are that when you log on, that first galaxy you see will be one that no human has seen before." "Some people have argued that galaxies are rotating all in agreement with each other, not randomly as we'd expect. We want people to classify the galaxies according to which way they're rotating and I'll be able to go and see if there's anything bizarre going on. If there are any patterns that we're not expecting, it could really turn up some surprises."

METEOR STRIKES -
MASSACHUSETTS - June 20 - At Gerrity Stone in Woburn, a rock punched a hole through a warehouse roof the other day. Experts are examining the object, trying to determine exactly what it is. "No one around here has ever seen anything like this. A real mystery." Workers were surprised to find the unusually heavy object on the floor. "Then we looked up at the ceiling and, 'Oh my God. It fell through the ceiling." "I'm suspicious that it's rusty and it shouldn't be rusty." The object weighs about 1.24 pounds. "This is interesting. It's clearly got some metal in it. The magnet does attract." There is a chance the object could be a meteorite. "The only one known meteorite to have fallen in Massachusetts and that was in Northampton in 1963. That was iron, as this appears to be." Meteorite or not, it's a mystery how the object fell from a warehouse ceiling. (photo)

TEXAS - June 13 - Wednesday night many people saw the beginning of a minor meteor shower, named after the constellation Bootes. What's causing this meteor shower? The Earth is passing through the tail of a comet. "It's like going through an oil streak left by the comet." Wednesday's show was just the beginning. It will last until June 27, peaking about next Wednesday. Look due south after midnight. The shower moves from west to east. In 2004, the same shower yielded 20 to 50 of the streaks an hour.

SRI LANKA - June 10 - The strange objects that lit the night skies on June 10 have now been confirmed as meteors. “This is the FIRST TIME THAT METEORS OF SUCH MAGNITUDE HAVE FALLEN IN SRI LANKA.” The shockwaves and vibrations have been heard throughout the country, from Galle to Puttalam. A Senior Consultant believes that two large meteoroids entered the atmosphere, the larger one splitting into two and the smaller one into about 25 fragments. The loud explosions were some of the particles exploding, probably about 50 to 100 km above the ground. The PECULIARITY of this incident is that there was very little trace of the meteoroids even where extensive damage occurred, such as in Dehiwala. The meteoroid was travelling at such high momentum that all the particles must have dissolved or vaporised by the heat on impact. Residents of Andiambalama say that they had noticed UNUSUAL movement of the stars for about two weeks continually prior to the falling of the meteor. “We saw many shooting stars, the children started gathering at about 8 p.m. every night just to watch this." In Kovinna, Andiambalama, at 9.05 p.m. on the 10th, a woman had noticed something unusual in the western sky. A bright light, almost as large as the full moon, appeared to be moving towards her in a wide arc. Alarmed by thoughts of terrorist air attacks, she called out to her neighbour. Together they watched fearfully as the glowing object drew closer, landed on the roof and vanished completely. A few minutes later the air vibrated with a loud explosion. The next day they discovered that parts of the asbestos sheets on the roof were charred and cracked. A few pieces of rock and sand were scattered around the damaged area. Similar incidents were reported around the country that night. Several people in areas such as Puttalam, Maho and Bingiriya also noted the appearance of the bright light in the sky as well as the loud explosion. In Kimbulapitiya a woman watched a flaming object land on a house and heard the booming sounds soon afterwards. In Campbell Place, Dehiwala, the roofs of two buildings were damaged, and a loud noise was heard. “24 asbestos sheets were broken.”

The same meteor impact that wreaked havoc with dinosaurs may have been the making of 162 species of Caribbean frogs, which descended from a single South American species, according to a new study. All of the frogs are an odd sort — having no tadpole phase, instead hatching complete out of eggs. The 800 or so species of these Eleutherodactlus frogs make up a fifth of all living frog species. The very large number of frogs on Caribbean islands evolved there in the last 50 million years, after an initial invasion of a single species from South America. It's interesting that there were no later invasions of frogs from the mainland. That could be because the frogs found the islands freshly wiped clean of predators by a mile-high, meteor-made tsunami. "That may be why we're not finding old Caribbean groups." The gigantic wave, triggered by the same meteor impact which created the Chicxulub crater off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, is believed to have scrubbed the Caribbean islands clean of life 65 million years ago. That ancestral good luck of the Caribbean frogs is now apparently running out in the face of a force almost powerful as a tsunami — deforestation. Just as biologists are beginning to understand how the Caribbean came to be, many of the species included in the study have already been driven to extinction.

Were ancient Americans wiped out by a meteor strike? - New scientific findings suggest that a large, extraterrestrial rock may have exploded over North America 13,000 years ago, explaining riddles that scientists have wrestled with for decades, including an abrupt cooling of the atmosphere and the extinction of large mammals. The extraterrestrial rock must have been about five kilometers across, and either exploded in the atmosphere or directly hit the Laurentide ice sheet located in the Northeastern section of North America. Wildfires across the continent would have resulted from the fiery impact, killing off the vegetation that was the food supply of many of the larger mammals like the woolly mammoths, causing them to go extinct. Since the Clovis people of North America hunted the mammoths as a major source of their food, they too were affected by the impact and their culture died out. The scientific team visited over a dozen archaeological sites in North America where they found high concentrations of iridium, an element that is rare on Earth, and is almost exclusively associated with meteors. The team concluded that the impact of the space rock melted a large portion of the Laurentide ice sheet, causing enormous amounts of cool, fresh water to flow into the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. This would have caused a major disruption of the circulation of warm and cold water in these oceans, leading to a cooler atmosphere and the glaciation of the Younger Dryas period. The scientists found evidence for the impact as far west as the Santa Barbara Channel Islands.

SPACE WEATHER -
6/3/07 -
New sunspot 960 emerging Saturday over the sun's eastern limb is big and crackling with solar flares. This sunspot poses a threat for significant solar activity. Already it has unleashed three M-class solar flares. One of the eruptions, an M3-flare at 1445 UT on June 1st, caused a shortwave radio fadeout over Europe.

METEORS in 2007, so far -
6/7/07 - A METEOR has left a bullet-sized hole in a module of the International Space Station, but the three-person US-Russian team of astronauts inside are not in danger. The puncture, in an outer pumping component on the module, was detected in the Russia "Zaria" module of the station during a spacewalk by the two Russian cosmonauts on board. It was the first time a meteor hole had been found on a module of the ISS. Several holes have been observed on the big solar panels that spread out from the orbiter. The module itself was not punctured. Photos of the hole have been sent back to Earth for study. Space debris, either natural or from parts of rockets and satellites, represent a serious danger to the ISS and its occupants.

VERMONT - May 14th - Recorded as a 2.1 temblor on the Richter scale, a quake hit at 4:10 a.m. along a fault line about four miles under the town of Hubbardton. One Hubbardton resident who said he was wide awake at 4 a.m. said he not only felt the earthquake, he saw what caused it. He said he saw something in the sky to the northeast of Lake Hortonia. He believes he saw a meteorite and that's what triggered the earthquake. "It was like a streak of fire. I've heard meteorites hit before and that was what it sounded like. It was no earthquake, it was a meteor." Earthquakes are RARE in Vermont and in the Northeastern U.S. in general. But while the quake on Monday was the first in Vermont in 2007, it was the second in the Hubbardton area in less than a year. In October, a 2.9 earthquake hit Vermont about 10 miles north of the one that jostled the town on Monday.

SPAIN - May 10th - Fireball spotted across central Spain. Scientists think some fragments may have fallen to earth in the Ciudad Real area. A fireball fell across the centre of the country on Thursday night with sightings in Cuenca, Toledo, Ciudad Real and Valladolid. Scientists believe it was a meteorite and say it’s quite a normal phenomenon, possibly a fragment from a comet which fell from earth orbit.

IDAHO - May 10 - A meteor lit up the night sky across eastern Idaho. Residents from Pocatello to Driggs say they saw the bright flashes around 9 pm. The National Weather Service confirmed that the striking sky show resulted from a meteor. Photos show a jagged trail of light across the darkening sky - easily visible to the naked eye.

CANADA - May 9 - There are reports of people seeing a meteor all over British Columbia. Startled stargazers were treated to a rare and beautiful sight when a brilliant meteor streaked through Okanagan skies. "It was an amazing, vibrant sight, a fireball with a white centre, blue halo and a long pink tail." The UNUSUALLY LARGE shooting star was visible for just a few seconds around 9:15 p.m. on Wednesday. "It was like a piece of fireworks travelling horizontally through the sky, much bigger than the normal shooting stars you see."

COLORADO - April 20th - Area residents who were lucky enough to be looking at the sky late Friday night are still in awe over a greenish-red fireball they saw zoom past. The object, likely a meteorite associated with the Lyrid meteor shower, was witnessed up and down the Front Range. It apparently landed somewhere near the Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs. These things are usually moving fast enough they impact themselves in the ground.” Several Longmont-area witnesses said they thought the object looked like it landed north of Boulder or somewhere in the mountains near Estes Park. In cases like this, local law enforcement and fire officials are notified by NORAD so they can check the impact site and ensure there’s no fire.
There were numerous reports of the meteor near the Air Force Academy around 11 p.m. “It kept lasting and lasting and lasting. All of a sudden, there was a big, green ball, and it changed to a red color and looked fiery. It seemed to shoot off some kinds of sparks and turned bright white. The sky lit up and then it went right into the mountains. It was frightening but at the same time amazing.” Every year in late April, Earth passes through the dusty tail of Comet Thatcher, and the encounter causes a northern hemisphere meteor shower, the Lyrids.

HAWAII - April 11 - A brightly glowing object that streaked across the sky above Maui was reported by a few people up early enough Wednesday morning to witness the phenomenon. Several people saw what probably was a large meteor that moved from northwest to southeast and/or an unusual cloud that remained in the sky after it passed. "We saw a glow going over us, just like an airplane" - a light blue, almost white object moving from northwest to southeast. For one to two minutes, they watched the object move across the sky, leaving a trail of smoke before it disappeared behind Haleakala. They couldn't tell if the object landed on land or in the ocean. "We didn't see any kind of explosion or flash." The object traveled roughly parallel to land until it abruptly changed course, "dropping down at a 45-degree angle." One man snapped photos at 5:49 a.m. of the smoke trail with his digital camera, but he didn't see the object itself. "It was just an amazing looking sight.The smoke lingered for an hour in the sky. . . . It was big, very noticeable in the sky."

NEW ZEALAND - March 29 - Flaming debris of a possible meteor almost hit a plane - The pilots of a Chilean passenger jet reported seeing flaming debris fall past their aircraft as it approached the airport at Auckland, New Zealand. The captain "made visual contact with incandescent fragments several kilometres away". The pilots reported the near-miss to air traffic controllers, reportedly saying the noise of the debris breaking the sound barrier could be heard above the roar of his aircraft's engines. The debris missed the jet by a margin of 40 seconds. An orbital debris expert at Nasa had checked with the Russians and their vessel - a spacecraft resupplying the International Space Station - had fired its re-entry rockets as scheduled, 12 hours after the Chileans reported the near miss. The Nasa expert said no other space junk was expected to be re-entering atmosphere at that time so the pilots probably saw a meteor.

CANADA - March 11 - what fell from the sky on Sunday night, visible between 8 and 8:30 p.m. to rapt observers from southern Ontario to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was likely a rock, no bigger than a fist and weighing about a kilogram. "Everything I have heard suggests that it was a bolide - a meteorite that was flaming though our atmosphere." Some people mistook it for a plane crash - a ball of light, seething white, careening overhead, spitting out dazzling debris. The whitish-green fireball seemed to be on such a dramatic collision course with Earth that from his vantage, an IT technician imagined two grim scenarios: a mighty cannonball into Lake Michigan. Or Milwaukee itself was due for a celestial smackdown. "I honestly waited to see something come up from the ground." For three or four spine-tingling seconds, people from a massive swathe of the continent shared the same slice of burning sky. And everyone imagined that whatever it was had landed in their own backyard. "That is not at all unusual for a really bright bolide. They have huge distances over which they can travel and, therefore, be seen. Especially if it's in the twilight or darkness hours." Of the thousands of meteorites raining on earth every year, most plunk into the oceans.

PANAMA - February 23 - Panamanian geologists found a meteorite at Rio Hato, a coastal town west of the capital Panama City. The meteorite fell onto Rio Hato's beach on Friday. The landing was witnessed by a security guard, who described it as a ball of fire crashing down from the sky onto the sand. The 4.2 kg red object, measuring 20 cm in diameter, was to be X-rayed for more details. The meteorite shows burn marks on its exterior, and appears to be mainly carbon-based, in contrast to most meteorites, which mainly contain iron.

OHIO - February 15 - Something happened at around 9 p.m. that a lot of people heard. But nobody seems to have any idea what it was. “It” was a loud bang, something loud enough to be heard all over the county, and loud enough to make small objects move in houses. Rumors range from an earthquake to a meteor strike, a sonic boom to something ice-related. While we may never know for sure, at least one scientist believes the meteor could be the answer. There’s no evidence to suggest an earthquake could have caused the bang, especially not over the range specified. “The type of waves that I see is not earthquake-type stuff. What bothers me is we don’t see it anywhere else. Right now this is mysterious to me.” The National Weather Service’s station in Wilmington is equally lost, especially after hearing calls from the Cincinnati area. The only common factor is that each area was affected by Tuesday’s ice storm. “It definitely wasn’t thunder. We’re kind of stumped on that ourselves.” One man said he saw a meteor with a relatively long trail, with red, green and gold coloration. It was headed east to west and lasted about three seconds; after it faded, the sonic boom washed over him. “I saw it first. It was the most eerie, cool, scary, wonderful thing. You just see this dragon tail going across the sky. All of a sudden, everything goes boom."

MIDWESTERN U.S. - February 4 - Scores of people all over the Midwest and Upper Midwestern United States reported seeing flames and fiery explosions in the sky Sunday night. From southeastern Wisconsin to as far as Des Moines, Iowa and St. Louis, people reported seeing balls of fire, possibly meteors, streaking across the sky on Sunday night. "We had a pilot reporting seeing a meteor". Reports came from residents in central Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

TURKEY - January 31 - Police were inundated with calls from scores of people from Didim to Bodrum after they heard a big bang and a flash of light across the skies. The flashing green, yellow and red lights were from a meteorite which crashed through the earth’s atmosphere and landed in Yesilkent. A startled man revealed that the rock had smashed a hole in the ground at the Green Park Complex, at Yesilkent, narrowly missing him by ten metres. Police reported that people from Bodrum, Milas and Didim had heard a bang and seen the flashing light across the skies at about 5:30pm on January 31. (photos)

VIRGINIA - January 24 - Some Giles County residents were a little shaken after a tremor-like event, others say they heard a loud "thunder-like" sound. Virginia Tech researchers say they received several calls about a meteor sighting the same time of the tremors. The bizarre incident took place around 8pm. Researchers say the seismic station in Giles County did get a very short but intense seismic signal.

RUSSIA - January 10 - a meteorite fell in January in the Altai Territory in southern Siberia and searchers found an extraterrestrial substance which could be meteorite fragments. "We have collected about 50 samples, and vitreous threads (traces of comet substance) were discovered in the first of them using a microscope." Local motorists and residents witnessed the impact of a fiery ball, which eventually ended in a loud sound resembling an explosion. Since a fallen meteorite was discovered in 1840, some 20 meteorites, including 4 in the 21st century, have been registered in the area.

A comet or some other extraterrestrial object appears to have slammed into northern Canada 12,900 years ago and triggered an abrupt and catastrophic climate change that wiped out the mammoths, mastodons and sloths that once roamed North America. Evidence of the ecological disaster exists in a thin layer of sediment that has been found from Alberta to New Mexico. The sediment layer contains high concentrations of iridium, fullerenes and other compounds associated with space rocks and impacts. "We have evidence for distribution of impact debris over several thousands of miles over the North American continent." The sediment layer formed 12,900 years ago coincides with both the extinction of the animals and the onset of a mini-ice age that lasted more than 1,000 years.

SPACE WEATHER -
5/8/07 -
The BRIGHTEST STELLAR EXPLOSION EVER RECORDED has occurred in a nearby galaxy and a similar explosion may be ready to go off in our own galaxy. "This was a truly monstrous explosion, a hundred times more energetic than a typical supernova. That means the star that exploded might have been as massive as a star can get, about 150 times that of our sun. We've never seen that before." It is UNPRECEDENTED to find such a massive star and witness its death. "Of all exploding stars ever observed, this was the king. We were astonished to see how bright it got, and how long it lasted." The star apparently expelled a large amount of mass prior to exploding. This large mass loss is similar to that seen from Eta Carinae, a massive star in our galaxy, raising suspicion that Eta Carinae may be poised to explode as a supernova. Eta Carinae is only about 7,500 light years away in our own Milky Way galaxy. "We don't know for sure if Eta Carinae will explode soon, but we had better keep a close eye on it just in case. Eta Carinae's explosion COULD BE THE BEST STAR-SHOW IN THE HISTORY OF MODERN CIVILIZATION."
The dangerous output of a supernova involves gamma rays, the most energetic form of light, plus cosmic rays that arrive in the form of particles. The emissions interact with nitrogen gas in Earth's atmosphere and break it into atomic nitrogen and subsequently nitrogen oxides, which in turn break down ozone. For a supernova to significantly deplete ozone it would have to occur within 26 light-years of our planet. Data shows that this happens only about once in a billion years. There are other possible ill effects of supernovae - exposure to high-energy particles from space, over time, could cause genetic mutations. Mutations are not always a bad thing, however. Scientists consider some mutations to be beneficial or at least normal aspect of evolution. Another worry are so-called hypernovae, which are related to mysterious gamma-ray bursts in deep space. Astronomers believe these are similar to supernovae but that a beam of concentrated energy, emanating along the star's axis of rotation, happens to be pointed at Earth. Astronomers estimate that about one gamma ray burst from inside our galaxy is beamed toward Earth every 200 million years. Because the energy is so concentrated compared to a normal supernova, hypernovae could potentially be harmful to life on Earth at much greater distances than supernovae.
So if the star eta Carina explodes, would it be dangerous for human beings? Most people who study Eta Car think that the rotational axis is along the symmetry axis of the homunculus nebula which surrounds eta Car, and this axis is tilted by about 45 degrees to our line of sight, which means that most of the dangerous emission would not be directed at us. So there's probably little danger to humanity. However there might be enough emission to disable communication and other satellites.

4/12/07 -
Scientists have reported RECORD-HIGH EMISSIONS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC ENERGY ON THE SUN, the biggest since the 1970s. Over the past few days, the volume of sun radiation, or X9, has exceeded the normal level 1,000-fold. The scientists call this phenomenon an anomaly and say that the Sun is now in a stage when sunspots, sources of high electromagnetic radiation, are UNUSUAL. “Outbursts on the Sun like this have been extremely infrequent. What is more, we have never had a chance to observe such emissions with the sun at its minimal activity.” Except for its timing which directed the energy away from earth, the flare could have disruptive effects on both electronic communications and health. GPS receivers have become widely used in recent years, using satellite signals in navigating airplanes, ships and automobiles, and in using cell phones, mining, surveying and many other commercial uses. Banks use the system to synchronize money transfers, "so space weather can affect all of us, right down to our wallet."

4/6/07 -
Scientists confirm that GPS services were impacted by a December 2006 solar eruption. Solar radio bursts can have a significant effect on global positioning systems (GPS). Solar flares have also been known to cause power outages and disrupt satellite functions. Forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed two solar flares on December 5 and 6, 2006, which occurred during a solar minimum when solar activity is supposed to be much calmer. However, these solar radio bursts were powerful enough to stop receivers from reading the GPS signal on the entire sunlit side of the Earth, and "… produced as much as 10 TIMES MORE RADIO NOISE THAN THE PREVIOUS RECORD." "In December, we found the effect of GPS receivers were more profound and widespread than we expected. Now we are concerned more severe consequences will occur during the next solar maximum."

The Cassini spacecraft has photographed a bizarre geometrical figure encircling Saturn's north pole: a hexagon. NASA scientists say they've never seen anything like it on any other planet. It is twice as wide as Earth. First observed by the Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s, the hexagon has been sighted anew by the Cassini probe. The hexagon could be a distant cousin of Earth's polar vortex, but while Earth's vortex is a circle, Saturn's may be molded into a hexagon by some strange pattern of atmospheric waves. "Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the LAST place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure." In short, it's a mystery. (photo)

SPACE WEATHER -
2/18/07 -
The threat of an asteroid hitting the Earth is being taken more and more seriously as more and more NEOs are found. At the moment, Nasa is monitoring 127 near-Earth objects (NEOs) that have a possibility of hitting the Earth. In the US, Congress has charged Nasa with the task of starting a more detailed search for life-threatening space rocks. "Congress has said that Nasa's efforts to date are not sufficient to the threat." Nasa estimates that there are about 20,000 potentially threatening asteroids yet to be discovered. The UN is drafting a treaty to establish who should be in charge in the event of an asteroid heading towards Earth, who would pay for relief efforts and the policies that should be adopted. In addition, it would set out possible plans to deflect the object. "This has gone from being an esoteric statistical argument to talking about real events."
Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which is about 140 metres long, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036. An asteroid that size could take out an entire city or region.
1/26/07 -
Something on the far side of the sun exploded Wednesday, hurling a bright coronal mass ejection over the sun's eastern limb. This is the second day in a row that a CME has rocketed into view from behind the sun's eastern limb. An active sunspot must be lurking just around the corner. [Yet the holographic image reveals no large sunspots on the opposite side of the sun.] A sunspot should appear in a few days when solar rotation carries that part of the sun into view.
UPDATE 1/27 - sunspot 940 is emerging over the sun's eastern limb, surrounded by a dark swirl of magnetic filaments, but contrary to predictions, it does not appear to pose a threat for strong solar flares. Sometimes, magnetic filaments become unstable and explode. Perhaps that's what happened on Jan. 24th and 25th when the pair of CMEs rocketed over the sun's east limb from the vicinity of sunspot 940. If so, this filament may offer hope for activity from this otherwise quiet-looking sunspot.

1/21 -
The night of the 18th at sunset, motorists in South Africa pulled over to watch what seemed to be a bush fire. As the twilight deepened, however, they realized it was something else: the extravagant tail of Comet McNaught. Even experienced astronomers say they've NEVER SEEN ANYTHING QUITE LIKE IT. McNaught's tail materializes at sunset in the southern hemisphere and is visible to the unaided eye as a majestic fan of pale streamers. The comet itself is visible only from the southern hemisphere, but its tail sweeps all the way back into northern skies. People in California, Colorado and Hawaii have seen it peeking above the western horizon about an hour after sunset. This "northern tail" is faint but pretty, and resembles a pale aurora borealis. (Dark skies are absolutely required.)
1/11/07 -
Comet McNaught, with a very distinct tail, has continued to brighten as it approaches the sun and it is now the BRIGHTEST COMET IN 30 YEARS. Solar heating will continue to puff up the comet, causing it to brighten even more. It COULD BECOME ONE OF THE BRIGHTEST COMETS IN CENTURIES, visible even in daylit skies.

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SOLAR WEATHER -
12/26/06 -
Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one. Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 "looks like its going to be ONE OF THE MOST INTENSE CYCLES SINCE RECORD-KEEPING BEGAN ALMOST 400 YEARS AGO." The next Solar Maximum should peak around 2010 with a sunspot number of 160 plus or minus 25. This would make it one of the strongest solar cycles of the past fifty years — which is to say, one of the strongest in recorded history. It's going to be intense. Curiously, four of the five biggest cycles on record have come in the past 50 years.
12/19/06 -
An energetic storm which erupted on the Sun has caused disruption to satellites and may have caused a glitch on the International Space Station. The solar flare interrupted signals in space and forced mission controllers to shut systems down to avoid damage to spacecraft orbiting Earth. The flare set off a fast-moving stream of atomic particles towards Earth. It may also have caused a fault in the system controlling the space station's orientation in space. The UNUSUAL solar activity caused the density of Earth's atmosphere to increase. On December 14, China's People's Daily reported widespread disruption of shortwave radio communications in China.
12/15 -
A significant geomagnetic storm was expected to impact the Earth beginning early Thursday afternoon around 1:00 p.m. Eastern time. Impacts from this event can cause problems with High Frequency communications, satellite operations and induce currents in power grids. This geomagnetic storm is the result of a strong radio blackout with an associated moderate solar radiation storm that was observed by the NOAA space weather forecasters on Tuesday. Also, observed was a powerful and fast-moving coronal mass ejection directed toward Earth with this activity. “It is a RARE occurrence to have a strong event like this so late in the Solar Cycle.” NASA officials said they did take precautions to avoid the effects of the radiation storm from the solar flare by having the astronauts aboard the International Space Station and shuttle Discovery sleep in protected areas of their respective spacecraft overnight.
12/12/06 -
A solar tsunami has been caught in the act of rolling across the face of the sun. The UNUSUAL shock wave, clocked at about 700,000 miles per hour, was triggered by a huge Dec. 6 flare that erupted from a rowdy Earth-sized sunspot during what is otherwise a relatively quiet time for the sun. "This is clearly a unique event. I don't think we've ever seen a wave of that magnitude." Normally when shock waves are seen on the sun, they tend to be short-lived, narrowly directed and seen in the super hot outer "corona" of the sun's atmosphere. This tsunami, however, was seen expanding through the much less hot chromosphere, just below the outer corona, with an almost perfectly circular wave front — like that of a stone dropped in a pond. "In this case there was this humongous explosion that caused the waves. It took about 30 or 40 minutes to cover the Sun." (event animation)
12/3/06 -
Meteoroids are hitting the Moon more often than anyone expected. That's the tentative conclusion of astronomers who recently saw two Leonids hit the Moon and explode. The includes includes a movie of one of the Leonid impacts.
A NASA meteor expert has used a computer model of Earth's meteoroid environment to calculate how often Earth runs into bits and pieces of comets and asteroids big enough to produce fireballs. (A fireball is defined to be a meteor brighter than the planet Venus.) Globally, Earth experiences more than a hundred fireballs every day, according to the calculations. Visit http://spaceweather.com for complete results.
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ODD SPACE EVENTS-
11/29 -
BRITAIN - A UFO scare was sparked after the police were flooded with calls about a fleet of 'spaceships' invading the coast of Britain on Tuesday, the 28th. Thousands of people spotted the bright orange orbs off the Channel coast at Brighton. Police and air traffic control centres were inundated by reports of the strange spectacle. "I saw this big orange light in the sky. Then another one appeared in mid-air. Then another. And another." Experts are baffled by the phenomenon, but believe it could be linked to a meteor shower. The Hermstmonceux Observatory in East Sussex said a cloud of comet dust had produced a meteor shower which peaked with a display of shooting stars.
A strange-looking sunspot emerged on the sun Tuesday, the 28th. It was shaped like a ring almost three times wider than Earth. Just yesterday sunspot 927 broke through the surface of the sun and formed the curious-looking ring. Today it has transformed itself into something completely different. Rapid changes could lead to magnetic instabilities and eruptions. Amateur astronomers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor this curious apparition. (photos)
Same link - When people in Washington D.C. stepped out for lunch on Monday, Nov. 27th, the ones who looked up witnessed a sensational display of luminous halos and arcs around the sun. "I was astounded by what I saw." The scene repeated itself in Maryland and Virginia. It was not only complex and beautiful, but also remarkably widespread. "Outstanding halo displays need high quality ice crystals specially aligned in the sky. This display has it all: random, plate, column, the RARE Parry and the EXTREMELY RARE and controversial Lowitz aligned crystals were present." (photo).
METEOR-
11/28 -
AUSTRALIA - In what sounds like a scene from the 70s movie 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', people in South Australia and western Victoria deluged police and media with reports of a spectacular meteor sighting. In Victoria, callers reported seeing a bright green object shooting westward in the sky. The object appeared to have debris trailing behind it. "It was really pretty bright and you could see something else coming down as well, but what it was I don't know." "It was before sunset and normally you only see those things in the dark. The trail hung in the sky for at least 15 minutes afterward like a jet stream."
RUSSIA - A bright rainbow was clearly seen on the gray sky in the center of Moscow at 3:45 p.m. Monday. It was quite a phenomenon to see a rainbow in this part of the world at the end of November. Actually, two parallel rainbows seemed to stem from the complex of the Kremlin buildings and the building of the State Duma in the center of Moscow. "This was a RARE PHENOMENON to see at that time of the year. Usually, there is a snow blanket in Moscow at the end of November, while a rainbow is seen only if there is sunshine with air temperatures above zero and high humidity." The rainbow stayed in the sky for a quarter of an hour, and then, the colorful miracle slowly faded.
SOLAR WEATHER -
11/8 -
Solar activity is about to increase - or so it seems. An active sunspot is hiding just behind the sun's eastern limb. For the past three days, it has been erupting, throwing clouds of magnetized gas high above the sun's surface where they can be seen from Earth. Some of these explosions have also produced strong radio bursts heard in the loudspeakers of ham-radio rigs. Soon, perhaps today, the sun's rotation will turn the sunspot toward Earth, providing a direct view of the active region. If it is indeed a big spot, we could be in for some stormy space weather in the days ahead. Visit http://spaceweather.com for updates.
11/5 -
An UNUSUAL ASTRONOMICAL EVENT will occur November 8. Called the Mercury transit, this event is FAIRLY RARE and on average happens only 13 or 14 times a century. On Nov. 8, the tiny planet will pass in front of the sun over a period of almost five hours. Most of the time Mercury and Venus pass a little above or below our line of sight because they are not in the same orbital plane as the Earth. This November transit is the second of a pair, of which the last one occurred in 2003. Unless you are an experienced astronomical observer, please do not try to observe this on your own. It is very dangerous to view the sun.
Solar flares might disrupt GPS services - U.S. scientists say strong solar flares cause Global Positioning System receivers to fail, creating potentially disastrous situations. Because solar flares are generally unpredictable, such failures could be devastating for "safety-of-life" GPS operations such as navigating passenger jets and stabilizing floating oil rigs. Large solar flares expected in the next five years or so could produce massive outages of all GPS receivers on the day side of the Earth.
GERMANY - A fire that destroyed a cottage near Bonn and injured a 77-year-old man was probably caused by a meteor and witnesses saw an arc of blazing light in the sky. The fire gutted the cottage and badly burned the man's hands and face in the incident on October 10. "We sought assistance from Bochum observatory and they noted that at that particular moment the earth was near a field of meteoroid splinter and it could be assumed that particles had entered the atmosphere. The particles usually don't reach the surface because they disintegrate in the atmosphere. But some can make it to the ground. We believe this was a bolide (meteoric fireball) with a size of no more than 10 mm."
OZONE HOLE -
10/23 -
The Antarctic ozone hole has BROKEN TWO RECORDS this year for the size of its area and depth. "From September 21st to 30th, the average area of the ozone hole was the LARGEST EVER OBSERVED, at 10.6 million square miles." "The depleted layer has an UNUSUAL vertical extent this year, so it appears that the 2006 ozone hole will go down as a record-setter." Measurements taken in October also found that nearly all of the ozone in the layer between eight and 13 miles above the Earth's surface had been destroyed. Part of the reason behind the extent of the ozone hole is colder than average temperatures. Warmer temperatures lead to smaller holes, while colder ones cause deeper and larger holes. Scientists have estimated that the hole will decrease in area by about 0.1 to 0.2 per cent for the next five to ten years. However, this decrease is marked each year by large variations caused by weather fluctuations. According to the United Nations the ozone hole will fully recovery by 2065.
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9/24 -
NEW ZEALAND - A small piece of rock that has been found in a paddock in New Zealand may be a piece of the meteorite that streaked across the sky there Tuesday the 12th, panicking residents who flooded emergency hotlines. A farmer found a 10cm by 5cm piece of "almost weightless" rock in his field today near the town of Dunsandel, south of Christchurch. It has been sent to New Zealand's National Radiation Laboratory for analysis. The meteorite tore across the sky over the northern half of the South Island in the afternoon, leaving a bright, burning trial behind it and causing a sonic boom that rattled houses and shook the ground. It then apparently erupted into a fireball, sending forth a thick puff of smoke. People were sent running from the homes and offices when they heard the boom, fearing buildings could collapse. Thousands of people phoned emergency services. Some said they thought an aircraft may have exploded in mid-air, while others feared an earthquake had struck the island, reports from New Zealand said. The sonic boom was registered on earthquake-detecting equipment. The boom meant the meteorite was probably travelling "very low". It was probably about the size of a basketball as it shredded through the sky and became a "terminal fireball" at a speed of about 40,000kph. "If this had happened at night, it would have lit up the whole countryside." The local farmer who found the chunk of rock had never seen anything like it before. He said it was so light to hold it was almost weightless. Scientists had feared it may have a spent nuclear fuel rod from a satellite, but tests have shown it is not radioactive. An airline pilot who wanted to remain anonymous has told the New Zealand Press Association that he saw something like a meteor, "but different", flash in front of his plane as he flew over the south island at the time. He said the object appeared to be spinning, like debris from a shuttle. "First time I have ever seen anything like that during the day," he said.
9/17 -
NEW ZEALAND - A meteor streaked across a large swathe of New Zealand's South Island on September the 12th, creating a sonic boom which sent people running from their workplaces and homes. The loud boom was heard over northern and central parts of the South Island shaking buildings and rattling windows. “All the reports suggest it was a pretty standard meteor but large and low.” It appeared to come from the south east, & was followed by a rumbling like thunder from the same direction. It most likely broke up in the atmosphere. Meteors are reported here every few years.
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8/20 -
BACKWARD SUNSPOT - On July 31st, a tiny sunspot was born. It popped up from the sun's interior, floated around a bit, and vanished again in a few hours. On the sun this sort of thing happens all the time and, ordinarily, it wouldn't be worth mentioning. But this sunspot was special: It was magnetically backward. "We've been waiting for this. A backward sunspot is a sign that the next solar cycle is beginning." Satellite operators and NASA mission planners are bracing for this next solar cycle because it is expected to be exceptionally stormy, perhaps the stormiest in decades. Sunspots and solar flares will return in abundance, producing bright auroras on Earth and dangerous proton storms in space. The sunspot was odd for several reasons - First, the sunspot lasted only three hours. Typically, sunspots last days, weeks or even months. Three hours is fleeting in the extreme. Second, the latitude of the spot is suspicious. New-cycle sunspots almost always pop up at mid-latitudes, around 30o N or 30o S. The backward sunspot popped up at 13o S. "That's strange." Even if Cycle 24 has truly begun, "don't expect any great storms right away." Solar cycles last 11 years and take time to build up to fever pitch.
NORWAY - At 10:20am a bus driver from Ås, south of Oslo, was sitting in the outhouse at his holiday cabin near Rygge on the 14th of July when he heard an enormous blast. Right after that, some particles from a meteor that exploded over the Oslo area rained down just outside. He said he didn't think too much about the surprising blast at first, dismissing it as probably coming from an exercise at a nearby military air station at Rygge. But he said the blast and the rumbling it caused was terrible. He was just hooking the door when he heard a new noise, a whistling sort of sound, followed by a new bang on some aluminum plates lying near the outhouse. Sure enough, it was particles from a meteor that exploded somewhere over the Oslo Fjord area on Friday morning. Astronomers confirm Martinsen's remarkable discovery of meteorite particles on his property. "This is Norway's 14th meteorite, but we've never heard about a meteorite landing so close to a person before."It was a stone meteorite, a so-called kondritt, found near the dented aluminum plates. It was magnetic and stems from the earth's own solar system. Twelve of 13 meteorites previously found in Norway are exhibited in Oslo's Museum of Natural History. "There can still be hundreds of pieces from this meteor lying around here." (photos) NORWAY - A family from Moss, south of Oslo, came home from their summer holidays to find a meteorite in their garden. It's another remnant of the meteor that exploded over the Oslo Fjord area on the 14th of JUly. Astronomers in Norway are calling the discovery of meteorites around southeast Norway "incredible," and urge local residents to keep looking for more. "Two branches on our plum tree were broken. I lifted them up and there lay this stone." It had made a hole measuring about seven centimeters in his lawn. I'd never seen such a stone, but noticed immediately that it looked like the one in the picture from Rygge." The family is donating the meteorite to the Museum of Natural History in Oslo.
NORWAY - Astronomers were fending off scores of calls on Friday, July 14th, from Norwegians who reported hearing what experts are calling a meteor explosion over southeast Norway, somewhere over the Oslo Fjord area. The meteorite in northern Norway was photographed streaking through the night sky, which remains light at this time of year. NORSAR, in Kjeller, has registered a signal from the explosion. Officials at NORSAR and at the University of Oslo said there likely are remnants of the meteor lying on the ground between Gardermoen to the northeast of Oslo and Askim to the southeast. The stones would be black and magnetic. It's at least the second meteor incident in Norway in recent weeks. A meteorite was photographed streaking through the light night sky east of Tromsø on June 7, and last week a resident of Stavanger reported finding a meteorite in his yard. The latter report, however, hasn't been confirmed and may have been a hoax. (photo)
ICE BALL -
7/10 -
SOUTH AFRICA - An ice ball that landed in Douglasdale, South Africa, might be one of the first 'megacryometeors' recorded in Africa. The ice ball, which landed on the pavement in suburban Douglasdale last week, was about the size of a microwave oven. The impact of the ice ball's fall created a small crater on the pavement, which was covered with pieces of broken ice. Despite sharing many chemical characteristics with hail, ice balls are formed under clear-sky conditions. Ice balls have been recorded since the 19th century. They have the potential to damage people, buildings and cars, but no injuries were reported as a result of this one. The ball was initially believed to be a jettison of human waste from an airplane, but those reports were erroneous. Six years ago, a plague of falling ice balls caused extensive damage to cars and an industrial storage facility in the Iberian Peninsula. An expert in the field said that the ice ball may be a warning of serious environmental problems.
A Spanish-American scientific team will be scanning the United States this winter for 'megacryometeors'. "I'm worried that great blocks of ice are forming where they shouldn't exist." Ice balls, which generally weigh 25 to 35 pounds but can be much bigger, have punched holes in the roofs of houses, smashed through car windshields, and whizzed right past people's heads. "If megacryometeor formation is linked to global warming, as we suspect, then it is fair to assume that these events may increase in the future." In January 2000 ice chunks weighing up to 6.6 pounds rained on Spain for 10 days. At first, scientists thought the phenomenon was unique to Spain. During the past three years, however, they've accumulated strong evidence that megacryometeors are falling all around the globe. More than 50 falls have been confirmed, and researchers believe that's a small fraction of the actual number, since others may hit unoccupied areas or melt before discovery. Most megacrymeteor falls occur in January, February and March. Megacryometeors show the telltale onionskin layering seen in hailstones. They also contain dust particles and air pockets found in hail. But they are formed in cloudless skies, a notion that defies research on hail formation.
ASTEROIDS-
7/3 -
A giant space rock is set to whizz past the Earth today under the close scrutiny of astronomers. The mountain-sized object has been classed as a "potentially hazardous asteroid" but scientists say there is no danger of a collision. It was set to make its closest approach to Earth above the west coast of North America at 0444 GMT. At this time it will be about 268,873 miles (432,709km) from the Earth, only 1.1 times the planet's distance from the Moon.
Possibly connected, but maybe not - Four installations in the U.S are at a higher alert level ordered last week. Operating with heightened security are an Air Force installation in Colorado Springs, one near Denver, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Patrick air force base in Florida. The Cheyenne Mountain Air Station, which houses NORAD, is now at "Bravo-Plus" which is slightly higher than a medium threat level. Space Command would not comment on the reason for the security increase.
7/2 -
An unidentified flying object is floating near the International Space Station at only 2.8 km away. Ground control responsible for the safety of the ISS space program is concerned with the new threat, which was extremely close to endangering the launch of Discovery space ship, on July 1. “The object has no number in the list of space debris. It is however probably an old piece of space exploration equipment.” "The situation is quite serious, but does not yet require a dodge manoeuvre." Should the old debris come any closer to the ISS, the two “inhabitants” would be forced to immediately move to the rescue space shuttle Soyuz. This is because a possible collision with the object could fatally break fuel or oxygen reservoirs, or permanently damage the solar panels. Given the velocity registered outside the last layer of atmosphere, on orbital trajectories, the object might have the same effect as an asteroid would.
6/25 -
OHIO - Residents of the Tuscarawas Valley who heard a deafening boom about 12:40 a.m. Monday the 19th and stepped outside likely saw what one person described as “a marvelous fireball with red streaks in the sky.” It probably was a meteor falling through the atmosphere. Numerous callers reported a large red fireball. Several said their homes shook. New Philadelphia police said they received reports from several callers who witnessed the fireball or heard the boom. One woman described it as “a blue light that lit up the sky and went down.” Police in Dover said multiple callers reported they heard a loud bang and something rattled their windows. Air Traffic Command in Washington, D.C. confirmed that Cleveland’s control center was checking into a meteor shower that occurred within its air space.
METEORS -
NORWAY - A large meteorite struck in northern Norway this week, landing with an impact an astronomer compared to the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima. The meteorite appeared as a ball of fire just after 2 a.m. Wednesday, June 7th, visible across several hundred miles in the sunlit summer sky above the Arctic Circle. 'I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a tail of smoke. I heard the bang seven minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a solid charge of dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away.' The meteor struck a mountainside in Reisadalen. The country`s leading astronomer said he expects the meteor to prove to be the largest to hit Norway in modern times, even bigger than the 198-pound Alta meteorite of 1904. 'If the meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb. Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare it to the bomb.'
On June 2 a fireball was spotted by people in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Canada. It was probably some 20 miles above the Earth's surface. A sonic boom was heard in the Lake of the Woods area of Minnesota, so there may be some pieces of the meteor that survived the fall.
MAY 2006 -
5/18 -
A comet that has broken up catastrophically will swing past Earth today. It will be the NEAREST APPROACH BY ANY COMET IN THE PAST TWO DECADES. Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 - also known as Comet 73P - will pass within a mere 10 million kilometres of Earth in a string of at least 67 pieces. Observers should be able to see two of the brighest chunks using a small telescope or even binoculars if they look near the constellation of Cygnus. Sky & Telecoscope (skyandtelescope.com) has predicted a meteor shower for May 22 or May 23, as Earth travels through the dusty debris trailed by the disintegrating comet.

The Sun's Great Conveyor Belt has slowed to a RECORD-LOW crawl, according to research by NASA solar physicists. "We've NEVER SEEN SPEEDS SO LOW." "It's off the bottom of the charts. This has important repercussions for future solar activity." Solar Cycle 25 peaking around 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries. The Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the Sun. It has two branches, north and south, each taking about 40 years to perform one complete circuit. Researchers believe the turning of the belt controls the sunspot cycle, and that's why the slowdown is important. Solar explosions, which produce their own deadly radiation, sweep away the even deadlier cosmic rays from space. As flares subside, cosmic rays intensify. Cosmic rays are high-energy particles from deep space; they penetrate metal, plastic, flesh and bone. The coming cycle, Cycle 24, will be unusually strong. The following cycle, Cycle 25, will be unusually weak.
AUSTRALIA - On the 16th of May, south-east Queensland residents were startled by a bright, green ball of streaking light that initially sparked fears of a plane crash. A police spokeswoman said the suspected meteor was seen travelling east to west in the region from Bribie Island, across the Sunshine and Gold Coasts as far inland as Warwick. Police were inundated by sightings of a "green ball of light". "As it comes in through our atmosphere we get a magnification effect so it always looks a lot closer but it is probably 60 to 70km inside our atmosphere. Calls came in, mainly in eastern Australia, regarding a meteor shower that has come through and broken up into a few pieces." "Most of them are the size of a grain of sand but this one must have been larger."

TEXAS - Astronomers said a large meteor shower crossed straight over El Paso just before 9:45 p.m. Thursday the 4th of May. One meteor was so large that it cast an orange glow against the mountain. "The animals were going wild, the horses were bucking and dogs were barking and howling and then, all of a sudden right above my house, there was a big bright light and then just 'Bang!' And it lit up the five acres that are around us, and then I covered my eyes like this because it was bright and when it got past I saw there was a tail and it just went 'Shhhh' toward the Hueco Mountains."

Something substantial has broken off an icy 50-kilometre object beyond the orbit of Saturn, leaving puzzled astronomers trying to figure out why. Comets have been seen breaking up before, but only after heating when passing close to the Sun or a gravitational disturbance following a close encounter with a planet. However, at 1.9 billion kilometres, this object is very far from the Sun. Another mysterious feature is that much more gas and dust is escaping from the breakaway fragment than from the parent body. The disintegration has created a dust cloud more than 100,000 km across and which is several times brighter than the original object was before the event. Images taken on 2 April makes it look “really strange". "The first thing that came to mind was a collision." Echeclus is currently moving towards the Sun on its 35-year orbit, and will pass closest to our star in April 2015.
In May Sky gazers will be able to watch a dying comet and its fragments which are going to fly past Earth, closer than any comet that has come in more than 20 years. A cometary "string-of-pearls" will fly past Earth. "The closest fragment will be about nine and half million kilometers away or twenty-five times farther than the Moon. That's close without actually being scary". The mini-comets will file through the constellations Cygnus and Pegasus near bright star Altair on May 12, 13 and 14.
JAPAN - Astronomical observatories have received a number of reports of a fireball, described as flashing orange or blue, seen in the skies over the Kanto region around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 29. Reports were received from Gunma, Ibaraki, Chiba and Shizuoka prefectures as well as Tokyo, and indicate that the unidentified object moved across the night sky from the west to the east. "When dust from the cosmos falls to Earth, it emits a bright light in the air. It's likely that the figure was one such fireball that was especially large and bright."
Solar Maximum - a solar storm is coming in 2010 - 2012: the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. In 1958 people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.

THAILAND - The sighting of what appeared to be an unidentified flying object (UFO) over Ayutthaya recently has left experts scratching their heads over exactly what it might have been. A burning object was seen speeding across the sky at about 6.20pm on March 4 in Ayutthaya's Nakhon Si Ayutthaya district. He took a photograph of the object, which he first thought was an airplane that had burst into flames. However, he was surprised to see the object continue to streak across the sky in an easterly direction before disappearing from sight. It did not appear that the object had struck the earth, rather it had travelled almost horizontally. He said some locals felt the object may have been some form of UFO. "It is strange because after contacting a number of local amateur radio hams, none had learned of any air crashes in the area." A cosmic adviser to the Thai Astronomical Society said the object might have been a large meteor.
A new computer model suggests that the next solar cycle will be more active than the previous one, potentially spawning magnetic storms that will be more severe and disruptive to communication systems. The next sunspot cycle will be between 30 percent to 50 percent more intense than the last one. The cycle will also begin a year later than expected, in late 2007 or early 2008, and peak around 2012. The new prediction is at odds with previous forecasts, which suggested that the intensity of the next solar cycle would be measurably smaller. Other research suggests that the next cycle will occur at the end of this year.
An asteroid capable of devastating an area the size of a sub-continent has about a one in 1000 risk of hitting Earth early next century on May 4, 2102. The rock, 2004 VD17, is about 500m long and has a mass of nearly a billion tons. If it hit Earth it would deliver 10,000 megatonnes of energy, equivalent to all the world's nuclear weapons. "The risk of an impact within the next century (is) higher than that of any other known asteroid."
LOUISIANA - Southern Louisiana residents spotted a green flash in the sky Thursday night, March 9th. Reports from Baton Rouge in the east to Jefferson Davis Parish in the west were called in to news outlets about a greenish light seen in the skies around 8:30 p.m. “It was big green flash and the end of it was wrapped up in flames.” It's likely that it was a meteor, but not one big enough to hit the ground. Meteors have to be of a certain size, neither too big nor too small, to actually make landfall and leave anything recognizable behind. If they’re too small, they burn up, and if they’re too big, they explode and the pieces burn up.
SCOTLAND - The hunt is on for the crash sites of two meteors near Stirling Castle. Scientists have been spurred into action by reports of spectacular "balls of fire" falling in the area. If discovered, they would be the first meteorites confirmed to have hit north of the Border for almost 100 years. The incidents, reported by several witnesses, were on the evenings of Friday, February 17 and the following Monda, February 20. "Although meteorite falls are rare everywhere, Scotland seems to have escaped remarkably lightly. There have only been four meteorites recovered from Scotland, compared with more than 18 from England and Wales. Statistically, we are overdue another one."
NASA detects 'totally new' mystery explosion nearby - Astronomers have detected a new type of cosmic outburst that they can't yet explain. The event was very close to our galaxy, they said. The eruption might portend an even brighter event to come, a supernova. It is being monitored by telescopes around the world as scientists wait to see what will happen. The event was "totally new, totally unexpected." If the eruption indeed precedes a supernova, then it would reach peak brightness in about a week, scientists said. The event, detected Feb. 18, looks something like a gamma-ray burst. But it is much closer — about 440 million light-years away — than others. And it lasted about 33 minutes. Most GRBs are billions of light-years away and last less than a second or just a few seconds. Other aspects of the newfound eruption were inexplicable. It was dimmer than most. Even so, the newly spotted point of light in the sky outshines the entire galaxy in which the event occurred. The scenario outlined by some researchers is that a very massive star has collapsed into a black hole and then exploded. The eruption occurred in the constellation Aries.
2/16 -
The earth wobbles as it rotates on its axis. At least it used to. As of January 8, 2006, the wobbling has stopped, according to earth changes researcher Michael Mandeville. What will the effects be? No one knows. Maybe nothing. Or, based on previous periods of similar lack of wobble, it may portend major changes in tectonic activity during ensuing years, including a dramatic increase in volcanism during 2006/2007.
METEORS -
CANADA - In Calgary on February 1st, 20 people reported seeing a fireball, an exceptionally bright meteor, streak across the sky just before 7 a.m., lasting for several seconds before breaking up into fragments. It was estimated that remnants of the meteorite landed about 400 km south of Calgary somewhere in Montana about two minutes after it appeared as a ball of fire.
BANGLADESH - A 'meteor' fell with a big bang on a field in the Singpara village of Sadar Upazila on the afternoon of January 31, creating panic and curiosity among people. No one was reported hurt. Villagers dug near a house from where smoke was still emitting. To their amazement they found a lead-like black material three feet below the earth. Hot and weighing 2.5kg, the triangular material looked like a mortar shell.
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Someday not so soon Washington, D.C., may find itself about where San Francisco is now. According to a recent study, Earth's surface may be slipping slowly westward, dragged by the same lunar forces that produce tides. As the Earth spins eastward beneath the moon, the moon's gravity ever so slightly holds the Earth's surface layer back. This "lunar drag" causes the crust to slip slowly backward.
METEOR -
IDAHO - early on the 11th of January around 7:15 a.m. a very bright meteor lit up the skies and streaked across the horizon going west to east. If it did hit the ground, the meteorite would likely be smaller than a walnut.
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2005 -
12/13 -
MICHIGAN - A smattering of early risers across a wide area of the Eastern Upper Peninsula were startled by the brilliant light from a falling meteor or some “space junk” in the northern sky about 6:05 a.m. Tuesday. The bright light traced a lightning-fast path over the northern horizon from west to east, briefly and silently illuminating the dark winter sky for a few seconds in the pre-dawn cold. The seemingly low trajectory of the object actually means it passed a significant distance away from observers. The silent passage of the object across the sky likely confirms the distance suspicion. A passage or landing within 50 miles would have brought a sharp sonic boom from the burning object, moving at speeds several times the speed of sound. “If they're really close, you hear a kind of whistling sound.”
GEMINID METEORS - The Geminids are one of the most spectacular meteor showers to make a regular showing - appearing each year in mid-December. Often bright yellow or green, they can be seen in almost any part of the sky, but appear to radiate from Gemini, near Orion. Under ideal conditions, up to 100 meteors an hour may be visible. This year only the brightest shooting stars will be seen because of the interfering light of an almost full moon.
The Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting away from North America so fast that it could end up in Siberia within 50 years, scientists have said. The shift could mean that Alaska will lose its northern lights, or auroras, which might then be more visible in areas of Siberia and Europe. The magnetic poles are different from geographic poles, the surface points marking the axis of Earth's rotation. Magnetic poles are known to migrate and, occasionally, swap places.
WEEK through 12/10 -
MARYLAND - Scientists are rethinking their theories about the Chesapeake Bay impact crater after they drilled deeper into it than ever before and found something unexpected: a huge slab of granite. They're trying to piece together what happened 35 million years ago, when a meteorite smashed into what is now the mouth of the bay. The mile-wide meteorite incinerated everything in its path and created a tsunami when it splashed into the sea, leaving a hole the size of Rhode Island. The huge slab of granite that starts at 3,600 feet and extends down to about 4,500 feet. The granite is lodged between sedimentary material that washed into the area after impact and a layer of crushed stone that was partially melted by the meteorite. Experts are unsure if the granite slid into the crater bed from the rim or was pushed there by massive shifting of the earth when the meteorite hit. Scientists also are unsure whether they've actually reached the bottom of the crater. "It could mean new models of crater formation."
12/8 -
ANOTHER AUSTRALIAN METEOR -
There were reports of a big meteorite crossing south-western New South Wales and central Victoria overnight 12/7. Two constables were patrolling about 11:20pm AEDT when they saw what they say was a huge light. They had a clear view of the meteorite dropping towards the ground in the eastern sky. "My offsider with me had a look as well and we were just dazzled. It was unbelievable, it was a huge light, much bigger than any star. It was sort of round and had a very long tail and seemed to be dropping fairly slowly, so we were able to see it for 15 to 20 seconds." Video
METEOR -
CANADA - Thursday morning (12/8) a meteoroid streaked across the sky. Witnesses saw a bright fireball streak west to east across the sky just north of the territorial capital of Whitehorse at about 8:30 a.m. "It was blue-white, neon-like and very bright, and lasted about four seconds." The meteoroid left a grey contrail across the sky that slowly broke up in the upper atmosphere. There were no reports of any sonic boom. In January of 2000, a 150-tonne meteoroid lit the skies over Whitehorse, and exploded over a lake about 100 kilometres south of the city. The Tagish Lake meteor produced a treasure of information about a rare kind of meteorite. Thursday's meteoroid likely burned up far above Earth's surface.
12/4 -
AUSTRALIA - A Perth astronomer says a spectacular light show in the sky 12/3 was a meteor. Sightings were made as far south as Albany and inland through the Wheat Belt. The meteor was about the size of a basketball. "It's come in across the state of Western Australia and burnt up in the atmosphere down over the south-west. It may well have gone out over the southern ocean. It lit up the countryside for hundreds of kilometres around the south-west of Western Australia." Witnesses say the the sky lit up about 9:00pm AEDT, and the light was followed by a thundering sound that shook buildings. "All of a sudden the sky lit up, it was a bright as daylight it was quite unbelievable. I looked up over head and there was something silver, sort of looked like a silver ball with a trailing reddish green sort of tail almost like fireworks. Then another one, there were two, quite spectacular objects." Another witness says he did not need his torch as the object passed. "I could turn the torch off because the whole sky was just bright purple." The meteorite was thought to be the MOST SPECTACULAR SHOW OF ITS KIND IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA IN THE PAST DECADE. "I've never seen anything like it, it was hair-raising. It was like a big bolt of blue lightning that just went on and on and on. It was quite scary. You could just see the flash go for miles." The show lasted 15 seconds. "I was waiting for the earth to start shaking, it just lit up the sky like daylight. Maybe 30 seconds after the flash, there was this big roar like thunder."

In a span of only 24 hours, sunspot 826 has grown from a barely-visible speck into a Saturn-sized active region, and it is still growing. This large sunspot is crackling with low-level solar flares and may soon pose a threat for a major flare eruption.

11/16 - BIG SUNSPOT : An impressive sunspot, "NOAA 822," has appeared on the Earth-facing side of the sun. Measured from end to end, it is wider than Jupiter, and it is crackling with M-class (medium-sized) solar flares. So far none of the explosions has hurled a coronal mass ejection toward Earth. Geomagnetic storms and auroras are possible, however, if this 'spot unleashes a major flare in the days ahead.
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WEEK OF 11/7 -
New on Geology.com is an interactive map of Earth's meteor impact craters. Zoom in on any of two dozen meteor impact craters.
ASTEROID IMPACT - Imagine last year's tsunami, last month's earthquake in Pakistan, and Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma all rolled into one — and then some. If nations can't handle those calamities, what's going to happen when an asteroid collides with Earth? In 30 years, there is a 1-in-5,500 chance that a smallish asteroid will land a bull's eye on our planet. "The possible consequences are way worse than your run-of-the-mill natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes. As bad as they may be, this can dwarf them." Scientists are carefully watching asteroid Apophis, which will whiz by Earth in 2029, passing within an unnerving 18,640 miles. That's a few thousand miles closer than many communications satellites and 220,000 miles closer than the moon. In 2036, the concern is that it will move in even closer, leading to the 1-in-5,500 chance it will strike.
AUSTRALIA - DEBRIS from the meteor wake has sparked numerous reports of fireballs in the night sky during the past week from across Australia and around the world. "Space is full of material left over from the creation of the solar system, and the earth is continually encountering this debris, which enters our atmosphere at very high velocities, many kilometres per second." The fireballs came from the Taurid meteor stream and were expected to increase in size and number in coming days between November 5 and 12. "The radiant is somewhere between Mars and the Pleiades constellation." Booming and hissing noises had been associated with reports of the fireballs. "The booming noises are analogous to the sonic boom of a high speed aircraft. The hissing noises are unexplained." One reported fireball was huge and "winked in-and-out of the clouds and lasted for at least 10 seconds".
AUSTRALIA - Some Riverina residents, in southern New South Wales, feared they had witnessed a plane crash early on 11/9 when they saw an apparent meteor shower. The fire brigade received a number of calls from people in inland New South Wales who thought a plane was coming down. "Oh, there was a big ball of flame falling out of the sky ... it would have been about 6.30pm [AEDT] and would've been north, north-east of where we were. It didn't last very long, you had to be quick to see it." The current meteor activity is creating a lot of talk around the world.
WEEK of 10/31 -
NASA sets schedule for handling asteroid threat in 2036 - NASA has outlined what it could do, and in what time frame, in case a quarter-mile-wide asteroid named Apophis is on a course to slam into Earth in the year 2036. Eight years from now, if there's still a chance of a collision in 2036, NASA would start drawing up plans to put a probe on the space rock or in orbit around it in 2019. If those readings still could not rule out a strike in 2036, NASA would try to deflect the asteroid into a non-threatening course in the 2024-2028 time frame by firing an impactor at it — using this year's Deep Impact comet-blasting probe as a model. Apophis was an unusual case among potentially threatening asteroids, in that it would take a relatively small deflection to eliminate the possibility of a catastrophic collision. In statistical terms, the risk of an impact is now set at 1 in 5,560 - based on the uncertainties surrounding Apophis' orbit.
For more than a decade, geologists have believed that a gigantic object, an asteroid or a comet, struck the Earth north of Norfolk, Virginia on the East Coast of the U.S., about 35 million years ago in a cataclysmic occurrence that left behind a 53-mile-wide, long-buried crater. Picture a white fireball 2 miles across thundering from the sky at 30,000 mph and crashing into the ocean off the Virginia coast. The impact vaporizes billions of tons of water, rips a hole in the sea floor 6 miles deep and fractures the bedrock far into the Earth. Debris is lofted over the horizon and rains down on an area of 3 million square miles, as distant as the Antarctic. Nearby life is blasted and then swept into the abyss by the boiling ocean. A calamity of unimaginable scale, it is probably the most stupendous geological event ever on the East Coast. There are more than 170 impact "structures" identified around the globe, more than 50 in North America, and millions more on planets and moons across the solar system. The one near Norfolk is Earth's seventh-largest site and the biggest in the United States. The Earth's biggest, 186 miles across, is at Vredefort, South Africa.
FIREBALLS - Numerous sightings of massive fireballs in the skies over Germany this week have led to an upsurge in reports of UFOs, but scientists believe the cause could be a bizarre annual meteor blitz. Such fireballs have been reported elsewhere in the world and may also be due to the fact that the Earth is now orbiting through a swarm of space debris. NASA's science Web site (http://science.nasa.gov) mentions reports of recent fireball sightings in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, North Ireland and Japan. It includes images of the fireballs, which one man likened to a spotlight. They have been described as "super-large, colored fireballs that shoot with the speed of lightning through the sky". "Some people said it looks like something out of a science fiction horror film." Amateur and professional astronomers were considering the possibility that the blitz was the result of a "falling satellite or UFOs." "It is possible that they are UFOs, which are after all things which we cannot explain."
ALASKA - Fireballs and bright streaks of light seen in the sky to the north, south and west of Anchorage on Thursday evening were evidently part of the Taurid meteor shower. In each case, the streak moved east to west and lasted no more than five seconds. Reports included a streak to the north that appeared to be over Talkeetna, a "ball of fire" over Homer and "meteor showers west of the airport." Residents of Fairbanks also saw the meteors.
UNUSUAL NUMBER OF NIGHTTIME FIREBALLS -
Before Halloween night was over, reports of meteors "brighter than a full moon" were streaming in from coast to coast. Astronomers have taken to calling these the "Halloween fireballs." But there's more to it than Halloween. The display has been going on for days. Every year in late October and early November Earth passes through a river of space dust associated with Comet Encke. Most years the shower is weak, producing no more than five rather dim meteors every hour. But occasionally, the Taurids put on quite a show. 2005 could be such a year. The Taurid shower peaks between Nov. 5th and Nov. 12th.
HALLOWEEN FIREBALL -
WASHINGTON DC - It appears there were at least three reported fireballs visible between 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. The fireballs may actually have been a string of very bright meteors. "Usually it's just a grain of sand moving through space so fast that when it hits the earth's atmosphere, it rubs against it, and so you have friction." Officials said it's rare for so many people to see the same thing on the same night.
WASHINGTON DC - A fireball similar in brightness to Mars, if not brighter, was seen throughout the area at approximately 6:30 p.m. Halloween night. Some have stated that they observed this fireball to split in two at the end of its luminous flight path. A second and much brighter fireball occurred at approximately 9:15 p.m.
VIRGINIA - A fireball or a meteor that appeared to be burning as it changed colors and moved through the atmosphere was sighted on Halloween evening. The "extraordinary bright light" was seen in Richmond and as far away as Goochland and Dinwiddie counties. "It was really, really strange." About 9:25 p.m. "the whole backyard suddenly illuminated." The bright blue light moved south with an orange and white streak. It then exploded and disappeared. The meteor was going in a Northeast to Southwest direction and had a bright white and green color to it. The trail and sparks from this meteor lit the southwest portion of the South Jersey sky and lasted for about two seconds.
In 1955 - one of the few documented cases of a person being hit by a meteorite occurred.

WEEK of 10/24 -
QUIET SUN - Solar activity is extremely low. X-rays from the sun have dimmed to their LOWEST LEVELS SINCE 1997. The ongoing quiet follows a furious outburst of flares and coronal mass ejections just last month, highlighting the unpredictability of the sun on month-to-month time scales. The 11-year solar cycle seems to be on track, however. The current spate of quiet is consistent with the approach of solar minimum expected in 2006.

Vast sheets of prehistoric lava some 250 million years ago were probably caused by meteorites, according to U.S. scientists. The huge volume of magma in the lava sheets might have caused global changes in climate that made Earth inhospitable to all but the hardiest species. A meteorite with a diameter of less than a mile could dent the Earth's crust enough to weaken it. "There's no reason it couldn't happen again."

This weekend, Mars comes closer to Earth than it will again for another 13 years. Rising in the east after sunset, Mars looks like an intense pumpkin-colored star. A new dust storm has erupted on Mars, big and bright enough to see through backyard telescopes. Some longtime observers say it's the most intense they've ever seen. On Oct. 28th the billowing cloud assumed the shaped of a giant tentacled octopus.

WEEK OF 9/26 -
METEOR -
Experts believe a meteor was visible along a large section of the Florida skyline Thursday night (9/29), although NASA officials have not confirmed what the intensely bright, fast object exactly was. The glowing orb was spotted around 7 p.m.; some who saw it called county and state officials to ensure that it wasn't a crashing aircraft. "This one could've been from a baseball to a basketball-sized chunk of space rock that slammed into our Earth's atmosphere at a very high speed." A meteorologist wasn't sure if the object, which he believes was a meteor, was over Atlantic Ocean waters or the Florida peninsula. "All of a sudden this thing shot from my right. And it was super fast, so you know it was in a hurry. It turned from orange to the-center-of-the-sun yellow then it disintegrated." Residents from the state's Space Coast region all the way to South Florida reported seeing the object.
In Florida on September 20th, dozens of people from Jacksonville to Ft. Pierce flooded the U.S. Coast Guard late Tuesday with calls about a mysterious ball of fire seen flying in the sky over the ocean. Experts said it could be a piece of space junk or a large meteor burning up in the atmosphere.

On Monday a rare annular eclipse will darken the Sun in a swathe across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In an annular eclipse, the Moon moves between the Sun and Earth but, because of a tiny difference in distance due to celestial mechanics, does not completely cover the solar face as in a total eclipse. Instead the Moon appears as a shaded disk, with a dazzling, beaded corona around its rim. The corridor in which this dramatic event can be seen is a narrow one, snaking from the North Atlantic, where it starts at 10.41am (841GMT), across the Iberian peninsula and then to northern and eastern Africa before petering out in the Indian Ocean. Countries that lie on this path comprise Spain, as well as Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, northern Chad, central Sudan, south-western Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. Total eclipses happen about once every 18 months, although these usually fall over the sea or uninhabited areas. The next total eclipse, on March 29, 2006, will traverse equatorial West Africa, the Sahara, western Mediterranean, Turkey and Russia.

A distant supernova that exploded 41,000 years ago may have led to the extinction of the mammoth. debris from a supernova explosion coalesced into low-density, comet-like objects that wreaked havoc on the solar system long ago. One such comet may have hit North America 13,000 years ago, unleashing a cataclysmic event that killed off the vast majority of mammoths and many other large North American mammals. They found evidence of this impact layer at several archaeological sites throughout North America. “Our research indicates that a 10-kilometer-wide comet, which may have been composed from the remnants of a supernova explosion, could have hit North America 13,000 years ago. This event was preceded by an intense blast of iron-rich grains that impacted the planet roughly 34,000 years ago.”

On Sept. 26, in Belgium, they observed something strange: a rainbow with no sun and no rain. It takes two things to make a rainbow - raindrops and sunlight. Raindrops act like tiny prisms, catching sunbeams and splitting them into their primary colors. "It was a very strange rainbow." "This red rainbow is a mystery because the sun had set four minutes earlier and was well below the horizon. Furthermore, there was no rain falling and none visible on local weather radar!"
A rare natural phenomenon was seen in the skies above Bedford, England on the 20th - an upside-down rainbow that lasted 20 minutes. All the colours of the rainbow – only in reverse order. They also saw an orb to the left of the sun. The phenomenon apparently occurs mostly at this time of year in warm weather, when moisture rises and meets particularly cold air in the atmosphere and forms ice crystals. "Apparently it requires perfect weather conditions and light, and with it being around 8.20am the sun was low in the sky."

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WEEK OF 9/17 -
Researchers have uncovered new evidence of a sudden, fatal dose of global warming 180 million years ago during the time of the dinosaurs. The findings could provide vital clues about the climate change we are experiencing today. Vast amounts of methane gas were released to the atmosphere in three massive ‘methane burps’ or pulses over a 60,000 year interval. Each individual pulse was very rapid. The addition of methane, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere had a severe impact on the environment, warming Earth about 10°C, and resulting in the extinction of a large number of species on land and in the oceans. While the methane release was very quick, we’ve found that the recovery took much longer, occurring over a few hundred thousand years. The methane came from gas hydrate, a frozen mixture of water and methane found in huge quantities on the seabed. This hydrate suddenly melted, allowing the methane to escape. “The methane was released because SLIGHT WOBBLES IN THE EARTH'S ORBIT PERIODICALLY BRING OUT PLANET CLOSER TO THE SUN, warming the oceans sufficiently to melt the vast reserves of hydrate. We believe that this effect was compounded by volcanic emissions of other greenhouse gases. After the methane was released into the atmosphere from the seabed it reacted rapidly with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is also a powerful greenhouse gas that persists in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years, and it was this gas which caused such a massive global warming effect”.

Asteroid 2004MN4 - when it went behind the sun, going out of view from the sun's glare, and then was rediscovered in December 2004, we were able to calculate its orbit and determine that it's trajectory was going to intersect Earth in the year 2029 or the year 2036. This didn't make it to the front of the newspaper because around that same time, you might remember, there was a tsunami in Indonesia – which, of course, rightly so, got the better part of all the headlines. But, ironically, this object, if it hits Earth, would create a tsunami dwarfing the one reported on in December '04. The gravity of Earth operating on asteroid 2004MN4 likely will pull on that asteroid in 2029 in such a way that in 2036 it will hit Earth. Uncertainty in trajectory normally is not a problem; if it misses Earth by a million miles, who cares? But, in this case, in the year 2029, the calculations show that this asteroid will come within the orbits of even our communication satellites. It will be the largest object ever known to come within our communication satellites in the era of space exploration. And so, turns out, what we know of the orbit right now, we can say it will not hit Earth in 2029 but it might hit Earth in 2036. It will hit Earth in 2036 if it passes through what we call a "keyhole," which is a range of positions close to Earth where the gravity of the Earth will realign its trajectory ensuring that seven years later it will hit Earth. And so what we need to do is deflect it in such a way that it misses that keyhole. If it hits, it'll hit somewhere between Hawaii and California in, obviously, the Pacific Ocean. That hit will generate tsunamis on the level that has never been experienced in recorded history. But the advantage is you would know in advance so that, while you might lose $400 billion worth of property, no one actually has to die from this tragedy if we can't prevent it. Right now, there's legislation in front of Congress to try to vote sensibly about directing monies for study. What would be the best way to deflect it? Do you shoot laser beams at it? Do you attach retrorockets to it?