A spectacular fireball kicked off the weekend for mainland Europe with a fireball so big and bright it could be seen in Croatia, Italy and Austria. The small space rock entered the atmosphere above the northern Balklandas at 10.34 AM local time, with thousands witnessing the event.
The explosion was so powerful that it literally shook the ground, leading many to fear that an earthquake was taking place.
Iva Tatić of Total Croatia News said: “I personally heard it. An ear-witness, if you will. I was sitting in my chair [when] I heard a loud, deep rumbling, unlike the usual sounds happening in my neighbourhood around this time of day.
“My first thought was that there was a very large truck in the very narrow street beneath my window, but there was no truck. Then I concluded it must have been an earthquake.”
“Many people shared how they also *felt* the earthquake, in addition to hearing the loud sound.”
Asteroids and meteors produce a bright explosion of fire when they hit the atmosphere as it is the first time the space rock has ever met resistance.
Air seeps into the pores and cracks of the rock, pushing it apart and causing it to explode.
The International Meteor Organisation (IMO) said: “Fireballs are meteors that appear brighter than normal.
“Due to the velocity at which they strike the Earth’s atmosphere, fragments larger than one millimetre have the capability to produce a bright flash as they streak through the heavens above.
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NASA is currently studying Asteroid Bennu, where its OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft arrived in 2018.
Part of the reason NASA is sending the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft there is to gather more information about the space rock which is 500 metres in length.
NASA fears that the asteroid, which has the potential to wipe out a country on Earth, could hit our planet within the next 120 years, with the next close flyby in 2135.
The mission will give vital information on how to deflect asteroids from their collision course with Earth, but NASA reiterates while there is a small chance Earth could be impacted, “over millions of years, of all of the planets, Bennu is most likely to hit Venus.”