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A mysterious fireball was observed over Oslo and various locations across eastern Norway on Saturday night.
According to Morten Bilet of the Norwegian Meteor Network, it is probably a space rock weighing several hundred kilos.
The geologist says that it is not uncommon for small meteorites to enter Earth’s atmosphere, totaling up to several thousand tons during the year.
– Still, it is not often that there are fireballs as big as this. It’s a completely unique event, he exclaims.
The video of the meteor is at the top of the article.
ROMSTEIN: Morten Bilet from the Norwegian Meteorological Association says that it rains down several thousand tons of extraterrestrial material every year. Photo: Private
Lasted a few seconds
The geologist says that the Norwegian meteorite network received almost a hundred messages on Saturday night. The meteor passed over Norway at around 10:30 and lit up the sky for a few seconds.
The cameras they placed in Harestua, Larvik and Kristiansand managed to capture the phenomenon on film.
– Rocks come from asteroid belts, planets, or even the moon, and are often billions of years old. When they enter the atmosphere, the materials are pressed at such a high speed that they begin to burn, which in turn causes them to light up the sky, he explains.
According to the geologist, it is not uncommon for meteors to reach a speed of between 20 and 40 kilometers per second.
The space rock was also observed in Sweden, and Bilet says it likely landed in Svealand northwest of Stockholm.
– In the Norwegian meteorite network, we managed to calculate the trajectory in it, and we are doing it right now. Everything indicates that it came from somewhere around Jupiter, he says.
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More fascinating than dangerous
– I understand well that some people think it is scary when that kind of thing sounds, but when you read more about it it becomes more curious. You understand that we are part of something very, very big, says the geologist.
According to Bilet, it is rare for people to be injured as a result of meteor showers on earth, and that most of them are harmless.
However, there are exceptions, such as when the massive Chelyabinsk meteor landed in Russia in 2013.
– A fireball the size of an apartment block thundered into the atmosphere. People thought it was nuclear war there, Bilet says.
He explains that around 1,500 were injured, but that no one had to pay with his life when the meteor fell. Most of the damage occurred as a result of the air pressure that arose when the meteor entered the atmosphere, which itself was powerful enough to crush buildings.
GIANT: The meteor that landed in Russia’s Chelyabinsk area in 2013 created air pressure that was strong enough to crush buildings, according to Morten Bilet of the Norwegian Meteor Network. Photo: AP / Nasha gazeta
Today, NASA has several telescopes and satellites that monitor objects on a collision course with Earth, under the program called “Near-Earth Object Observations.”
According to the geologist, therefore, they can detect meteors and similar objects well in advance and, in the worst case, they can launch rockets that can change the course of meteors if they pose a threat.
If you go back a bit more in time, the situation was quite different.
– When meteors and comets appeared in the sky in the Middle Ages, there were usually rumors that they could expect a war or a change of leadership. In that sense, it’s kind of funny that Biden won the election yesterday, says Morten Bilet.
