Fireballs

                                         Fireballs

              

     There's been a lot of interest surrounding asteroids passing through our atmosphere before entering the earth's surface. As they pass through our atmosphere they literally burn up, often exploding into tiny peace's.   The New Zealand observatory did extensive studies regarding a recent fireball including its source. By extending this projection they deduced they are coming from the asteroid belt. 

     The question is why now? The first indication of their source is their velocity which is 17 km/sec. Asteroids generally all have a similar velocity of 17 to 19 km/sec, which indicates they all came from a singular event. 

     Upon examining these small remnants of this fireball. Something unusual was discovered.  They were made up of Ukrite. Ukrite is a volcanic material not associated with common asteroids. Ukrite is the result of a planet like geophysical eruption. Ukrite meteor found below.

                                      

      The only object in the asteroid belt that has these geological features is the large planet like asteroid Vesta. So the source of many of these fireballs. Not all of them but a large portion of them come from Vesta. 

     Now the intriguing part. How big were these asteroids from Vesta before they enter earth's atmosphere? A ukrite asteroid passed over Ohio and the US observatory was able to determine it's size as 2 metres across, before entry into earth's atmosphere. That size would give this asteroid a mass of 7 tons. This allowed researchers to add all the found small meteor fragments and come up with an approximation of any meteors mass. By using a ratio of the mass that was in the Ohio asteroid  known mass before the asteroid entered earth's atmosphere, compared to the small remnants that survived, all ukrite asteroids masses could be calculated. AstroRay brough this ratio to attention.

     This would give the New Zealand asteroid a mass of 1 ton.

               

So the bigger question is. What is happening to Vesta? The earth in our time has never seen these great sized asteroid from Vesta. So why are we now seeing these huge chunks of ukrite entering our earth's atmosphere as fireballs? How are these huge asteroids able to leave Vesta's gravitational force? A 7 ton asteroid from Vesta indicates a very large destabilizing event occurring.

      All these expensive space telescopes are pointed at some distant red dot in the outer reaches of our universe unaware that something dramatic and dangerous is in our back yard. 

     When will the really big asteroid hit the earth?