William sent in the link to www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/01/03/meteor-explodes-pittsburgh… … a loud bang shook homes in Pittsburgh over the New Year. The National Weather Service noticed a flash captured by its satellite's 'Geostationary Lightning Mapper' in a neighboring county. The flash had no connection with lightning, it would seem, and the only other explanation was a meteor exploding overhead. A couple of days later meteorologist Myranda Fullerton confirmed the flash was a meteor. NASA Meteor Watch registered the blast wave from the meteor as it broke apart. The energy released was the equivalent of 30 tons of TNT – suggesting the meteor was around 3 feet in diameter. If it hadn't been so cloudy the meteor explosion would have been 'blindingly' bright. NASA said it was around 100 times brighter than the moon. These things are out there. What would people in earlier eras think of them?
The same story is at https://phys.org/news/2022-01-nasa-metrics-meteor-shook-ground.html … where we are told more or less the same thing but with an add-on. Residents reported hearing a loud noise and feeling their homes shaking and rattling. However, their was no seismic activity involved – and no thunder and lightning. A small meteorite it was, then.
At www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10358163/ … a small asteroid twice the size of the empire state building in New York will zip past the earth on January 18th. It is estimated the fly-by will be 699,000 miles away, five times the distance of the earth from the moon.