People have been asking about strange activities that occur overhead for a long time.
December 2018 saw New York City’s sky explode in a blue light. People speculated about a U.F.O. Flyby or alien invasion were theories, but the actual cause was a transformer blast at a Con Edison substation. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in 2015 that a 500-pound-tall meteor streaked through western Pennsylvania’s skies, triggering an audible boom. In October, a boom rattled homes in New Hampshire. This was in response to rumors that either an aircraft or an earthquake were responsible. Satellite imagery suggested that a meteor may have exploded in the atmosphere above New Hampshire.
In Pittsburgh on Saturday, Ms. Lake said that nobody reported seeing anything “below the cloud deck,” which was about 2,000 feet above the ground. Ms. Lake thinks the meteor could have been “a couple of thousand feet” above the ground, but not below the cloud cover.
For now, a meteor explosion is the best theory about what happened over Pittsburgh on Saturday, Ms. Lake said, though it will remain just that — a theory — “unless someone finds some rocks in their backyard,” she said.
Ms. Turnshek, the Carnegie Mellon lecturer, said that what she and others in Pittsburgh experienced on New Year’s Day was “rare and notable,” a “once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Despite the rarity, there is no shortage of movies depicting the dangers of a meteor, asteroid or comet crashing to Earth (including “The Day the Sky Exploded,” “Meteor,” “Armageddon” and the recent “Don’t Look Up”).
Ms. Turnshek explained that such things are being looked for by astronomers. “If we had found a large body incoming,” the best solution would probably be to “send a rocket to sit next to it, and the gravitational pull of the rocket will pull it off course.”
Source: NY Times
