Huge Fireball Meteor over Alaska Sets off Volcano Warning System 360 Miles Away
A huge “fireball” meteor that lit up skies across west Alaska also set off newly installed sensors for detecting volcanic activity, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has said.
The event, which took place on October 15, triggered six of the sensors’ alarms at a new monitoring station on the Kenai Peninsula. The sensors are built to detect low-frequency sound waves in the atmosphere during volcanic activity, but in this case they picked up waves coming from the meteor that had streaked across the sky around 360 miles away.
In a Facebook post, the USGS said the meteor also triggered an alarm at Mount Spurr—a large, active volcano that sits around 80 miles from Anchorage that last erupted in 1992. However, as other monitoring systems also picked up on the waves, “it quickly became clear that this was not activity at Mount Spur,” the post said.
Scientists with the USGS Alaska Volcano Observatory worked with researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute to investigate the cause. They found the meteor passed over Alaska around 40 miles from the Athabaskan community of Kaltag, which sits on the Yukon River.
In a blog post for the American Geophysical Union, UAF science writer Ned Rozell said witnesses reported the fireball in regions hundreds of miles apart. One resident of Ruby described it as an “enormous ball of light in the sky,” saying it was moving north to south. Another resident said it looked like “fireworks” that split into four dots.
David Fee, head of the infrasound program at UAF’s Geophysical Institute and researcher with the AVO, said he believes the meteor exploded somewhere east of Kaltag. “I typically don’t work on meteors, but they are often really nice infrasound sources to help better understand the performance of our networks, and I think provide valuable information on meteors and bolides themselves,” he said.
Courtesy of newsweek.com
NASA warns of upcoming close shave with asteroid as doomsday preacher predicts ‘apocalyptic fireball’ #Asteroid #Fireball #NASA
Two asteroids are set to dart past Earth in the coming days, while NASA has warned about an impending close shave with an airplane-sized space rock. A doomsday preacher has also issued a dire warning about the upcoming encounter.
Greatly enhanced detection techniques have allowed astronomers to witness an ever-increasing number of asteroid flybys in recent years. The latest installment will see two space rocks skim past Earth this week. Both of the rocks were only spotted in recent days, a reminder of the threat that undetected asteroids potentially pose to our planet.
Thankfully, both of the rocks will pass at a safe distance of more than 1.5 million kilometers (932,056 miles). However, on September 1 we’re set for a far closer encounter, when a 28-meter space rock, officially known as 2011 ES4, will skim past Earth at only one third of the distance between our planet and the moon.
The visitor will whizz by at a speed of nearly 30,000 kilometers (18,600 miles) per hour. NASA has labelled it a “Potentially Hazardous Asteroid” because of possible risk it poses to our Earth.
While 2011 ES4 will almost certainly fly past our planet at a safe distance, Pastor Paul Begley has issued dire warnings about it heralding the end of the world.
“It’s been confirmed, incoming fireballs, apocalyptic, headed in our direction,” the self-proclaimed End Times prophesier forecast in a recent video on his popular YouTube account.
Begley cites biblical passages mixed with cherry-picked scientific evidence as “proof” that the planet is in mortal danger from incoming “apocalyptic fireballs”.
I’ve been talking about this for a decade because we knew, according to the Bible, we knew it was coming – even without scientific proof,” he explained. “Even Stephen Hawking says the Earth will be consumed in fire in 2600. I think it’s gonna be way way sooner than that because the Bible says it in second Peter, chapter three.”
Begley claimed that “more than 100 tonnes of space dust and rock” will rain down into our atmosphere every day in a sign of the impending apocalypse. Unsurprisingly, there is no scientific basis for these claims.
Courtesy of rt.com
Please Donate To Support My Work
Earth Extremities 
Comments