On Sunday, much of New Hampshire reported feeling and hearing an inexplicable "boom" that rattled windows and reverberated throughout the state.
Now, scientists are speculating that the explosion may have been extraterrestrial in origin:
Satellite imagery suggests that a meteor might have exploded in the atmosphere over New Hampshire, according to those meteorologists, who say that explanation is not at all far out.
This time of year, they pointed out, is known for intense meteor showers: the Draconids that peaked two days earlier and the Orionids that continue until November. The fireballs that explode in a bright terminal flash, often with visible fragmentation, are known as bolides, according to the American Meteor Society.
"Sure enough, there was a little blip there right around the time that folks started calling and reporting about the sound," Greg Cornwell, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, the forecast office for New Hampshire, said Tuesday.
Pretty wild.
This sort of thing has happened before, at times with cataclysmic results. In 2013 a widely-observed meteor in Chelyabisnk, Russia, generated a shockwave that shattered countless windows.
In 1908, meanwhile, a meteor estimated to be just a few hundred feet in diameter exploded above the Yeniseysk Governorate in Russia and flattened nearly 1,000 square miles of trees!
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