The day was somewhat stormy. I was in my kitchen in my north-suburban-Boston house, when I suddenly heard a BOOM. I thought it was a very large branch falling on my house, so I ran outside to check out the roof. Saw nothing, and only later heard about the meteor.
Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
21–30 of 105 posts
Re: Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
#22From the outer Cape it sounded like a long low rumble. I tought it was the wind making an unusual noise.
Re: Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The shockwave comes from meteor's movement alone, the parts never move apart with any speed comparable to their common forward motion.. PSA is false. https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/watch-the-skies/2026/03/26/its-fi...
jojobas and NASA's statements aren't contradictory. NASA states: "the fragmentation of the fireball unleashes large amounts of energy, which also generates a pressure wave that can produce a very loud boom, even shaking houses." Fragmentation of a fireball, whilst not explosive itself (the particles needn't diverge at a supersonic relative velocity) are nonetheless part of a supersonic / hypersonic particle field rel…
Your statement is not supported by, and is somewhat at odds with, physics. As described in this source, observed terminal brightening/"burst" of a bolide is tied to the body's material behavior (fragmentation, rapid lateral expansion, ablation), and not to a free-standing "deceleration shockwave" that exists independently of the body breaking up.
Re: Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
#24I have a Birdweather puck (https://birdweather.com) that listens for birds in our backyard in suburban Boston. It also measures sound pressure level (30 second sample rate).
Our puck showed a 90.8dB sound level compared to a 55dB baseline.
We thought a tree had hit the house because of the double boom. That was a repeated observation across all the local social media groups. The local UPS driver, who was outside at the time, said he "felt it in his chest".
Interesting this also happened in South Carolina and Ohio within the past few months.
Re: Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
#25The day was somewhat stormy. I was in my kitchen in my north-suburban-Boston house, when I suddenly heard a BOOM. I thought it was a very large branch falling on my house, so I ran outside to check out the roof. Saw nothing, and only later heard about the meteor.
Similar, except I saw a bunch of our neighbors doing the same thing which told me it wasn't a branch or similar that would affect just our house.
I've never experienced this before so I figure we've witnessed something truly rare and special that might not happen again in our lifetimes.
Re: Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
PSA: The word "explosion" has multiple definitions, plenty of which are actually quite reasonable to apply to meteors! It can refer to the sound alone, for example. The people reporting an explosion in Massachusetts were not incorrect! It would however, be incorrect to claim that the meteor had noting to do with explosions.
No? There is no violent expansion or bursting, even if the sound is similar. It is as much an explosion as a supersonic jet passing by, and that is not much. The term makes people think atmospheric heating causes an actual steam explosion and that's the source of shockwave, which can't be further from truth.
Do you not consider Tunguska an explosion? It’s always described as such. IIRC, it never even hit the ground. Sure, a lot of the damage was caused by the air being compressed from above, but it created an air burst, which would have released a lot of energy in every direction.
Re: Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
#27PSA: meteors have nothing to do with explosions. The shockwave comes from meteor's movement alone, the parts never move apart with any speed comparable to their common forward motion. A breakup will increase surface area and therefore kinetic energy to shockwave transfer efficiency, still not an explosion.
You are correct in class 9 physics book in India we have a mention of supersonic planes producing a sonic "boom" so the suprsonic planes don't themselves explode but their fast movement makes the air produce the boom. So you were correct as far as I can tell. But meteors do get smaller and smaller due to extreme friction from air and they do break into several pieces so that can also add to the sound.
Re: Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
#28"230 tons of TNT"
I hate units of TNT. Ill do psi. Love the foot. The calorie is metric! But what on planet earth is "ton of TNT"?
The energy that was dissipated (using 0.5 mv^2) was 1TJ, or the 280 000 kWh.
Re: Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
#29[deleted]
Re: Meteor Explodes over Massachusetts
#30I’m around 8 miles west of Boston. I was playing on the floor with my daughter and had my ear to the ground- suddenly heard all of the windows shaking, the floor rumbled and an explosion louder than I’ve ever heard before.
Honestly what spooked me the most was seeing nothing on the horizon to help explain it! I am shocked and grateful it didn’t break any windows or cause further damage.