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mhalle 3 minutes ago [-]
I 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.
dtgriscom 12 minutes ago [-]
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.
foobarian 2 minutes ago [-]
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.
deadeye 12 minutes ago [-]
From the outer Cape it sounded like a long low rumble. I tought it was the wind making an unusual noise.
2 hours ago [-]
pithon 48 minutes ago [-]
I was at a beachhouse north of Boston and I thought someone fell out of bed or dropped something really heavy upstairs. It was loud and the whole house shook. All of us were scouring the internet for like an hour, finding absolutely nothing "official" or any mention of it on news sites- just tons of subreddits and other social media blowing up all over the Northeast wondering what the heck it was.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2 hours ago [-]
I didn't hear it in northern RI but all my friends heard it clearly. I feel left out
cogogo 2 hours ago [-]
I heard it in Boston and with initial reports saying it broke up over Cape Cod I was kind of surprised and just assumed a very big kaboom. There was a strong storm with 30knt wind from the North at the time. It makes a lot more sense that the shockwave was produced North of here at the NH border and travelled with the wind and the remnants falling East of here in the Bay.
PSA: 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.
margalabargala 2 hours ago [-]
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.
jagged-chisel 2 hours ago [-]
None of the definitions I found are concerned with only sound. One mentions sound as a result of an explosion.
PSA: expressing an opinion (incorrect or otherwise) is not actually a public service announcement
jojobas 2 hours ago [-]
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.
1970-01-01 1 hours ago [-]
>The shockwave comes from meteor's movement alone, the parts never move apart with any speed comparable to their common forward motion..
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 relative to the atmosphere they are passing through. Expanding the diameter of that particle field will increase the size of the resultant shockwave, whether the particle separation itself is "explosive" or not.
The "explosion" then is of the deceleration (aerobraking) shockwave, not the bolide separation. But the bolide separation increases the intensity of the shockwave, with more (and lighter) particles interacting with the atmosphere over a shorter distance than an intact, small-diameter bolide would.
Some of this depends on what definition of "explosion" one chooses, or whether people are intending an explosion specifically, or an explosive sound (sonic boom). That's confounded by bolide separation, the bright light emitted on entry, and sonic effects, all of which are semantically associated with other explosive events. Language is a consensus phenomenon.
I'd tend to call the event an explosion, though not in the expanding particle field sense.
1970-01-01 4 minutes ago [-]
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.
The Wikipedia article on "meteor air burst" has an explanation that basically matches yours, although they do use the word "explosion" to describe it. Which makes sense to me: whatever one chooses to call it, it's a nearly instantaneous spontaneous disassembly that is very bright, very hot, and very loud.
The speed scale for disassembly is nowhere near the forward speed; you never get anywhere close to 45 degree debris divergence angle. It's also, again, not the disassembly that causes it to be bright, hot and loud. Wikipedians can also be wrong.
gruntled-worker 1 hours ago [-]
We are not disassembling, we are assembling in another time direction.
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.
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.
https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/meteorite-falls/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSY4fEEg4j0
A breakup will increase surface area and therefore kinetic energy to shockwave transfer efficiency, still not an explosion.
It would however, be incorrect to claim that the meteor had noting to do with explosions.
PSA: expressing an opinion (incorrect or otherwise) is not actually a public service announcement
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.
PSA is false.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/watch-the-skies/2026/03/26/its-fi...
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 relative to the atmosphere they are passing through. Expanding the diameter of that particle field will increase the size of the resultant shockwave, whether the particle separation itself is "explosive" or not.
The "explosion" then is of the deceleration (aerobraking) shockwave, not the bolide separation. But the bolide separation increases the intensity of the shockwave, with more (and lighter) particles interacting with the atmosphere over a shorter distance than an intact, small-diameter bolide would.
Some of this depends on what definition of "explosion" one chooses, or whether people are intending an explosion specifically, or an explosive sound (sonic boom). That's confounded by bolide separation, the bright light emitted on entry, and sonic effects, all of which are semantically associated with other explosive events. Language is a consensus phenomenon.
I'd tend to call the event an explosion, though not in the expanding particle field sense.
https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2001ESASP.495..491R
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_air_burst