Meteor as heavy as an elephant causes widespread speculation

A meteor makes a loud bang as it rips through the sky over New England.

When the double boom rang out in New England over the weekend, shaking homes and sending pets fleeing, questions started flooding social media.

“Did anyone else hear that boom?”

“Anyone feel that?”

NASA let people know over the weekend that the cause of the commotion was a meteor, but on Monday they revealed even more stunning details.

The fireball was as heavy as an elephant and 5 feet (1.52 metre) wide and was going 42,000 m.p.h (67,592.5 km/h) when it entered Earth’s atmosphere. It broke up miles above New England on Saturday and the energy released was equivalent to about 230 tons of TNT, the agency estimated, accounting for the booms.

NASA revealed the jaw-dropping details in a social media post Monday along with other statistics.

The meteor was made up of natural material — not a satellite or space debris — and traveled through the atmosphere for about 26 miles (41.8 kilometres), according to NASA, before falling into Cape Cod Bay, which sits along southeastern Massachusetts.

The agency was quick to point out that meteors are very common, but typically don’t have as big of an audience as this one.

“They often occur over the ocean or unpopulated areas with no witnesses, or during the daytime, making them difficult to spot,” according to NASA.

The event prompted widespread speculation initially.

The rattling boom had some people in Massachusetts and Rhode Island thinking there had been an earthquake or that a tree had fallen. Others posted that their dogs were freaking out. At least one person posed the possibility of aliens.

A man in Peabody, Massachusetts, posted that it had been a windy day, so he thought a large tree had hit his house. When he came outside, he said, he found most of his neighbors in the street asking the same questions.

Several people filed reports with the U.S. Geological Survey, registering the shaking they felt with the National Earthquake Information Center, Steve Sobie, an agency spokesman, confirmed.

The agency opened an event page, based on the number of “Did you feel it?” reports it received on its website. But Sobie said there was no event registered on the agency’s seismographs. meaning the shaking was not due to an earthquake.

The American Meteor Society received dozens of reports from Delaware to Montreal with people either hearing the double boom, feeling the ground shake or seeing the fireball, its program monitor, Robert Lunsford, said.

Hallie Golden, The Associated Press