Fireball Lights Up Scientist’s E 50-Ton Space Rock May Have Slammed Into Arctic Ice Cap
Did a 50-ton space rock slam down on the ice cap of southern Greenland 13 days ago? It is an Arctic mystery whose solution may have to wait for spring.
Early on Dec. 9, shocked fishermen reported a blazing fireball that turned night into day. The question is whether the object burned up in the atmosphere or struck the Earth, astronomers said. Scattered reports of seismic tremors occurring moments later strengthen the case for an impact but are not conclusive, according to Scandinavian scientists who are investigating the event.
Research teams are eager to search the area for fragments, but the harsh winter conditions are making this difficult, if not impossible, for now. Up to 40 inches of snow has fallen in the area since the impact, and another 10 feet is anticipated before the spring thaw. Attempts to inspect the site from the air have been hampered by clouds.
Here is the primary evidence so far:
Crews aboard three Danish and Norwegian trawlers at widely separated sites on both sides of southern Greenland reported seeing the light trail at 5:11 a.m. local time, according to the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. The institute is coordinating an investigation that also includes the Tycho Brahe Planetarium, the Copenhagen Astronomical Society, the Danish Center for Remote Sensing and the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR).
“The flashes observed in conjunction with the meteorite were so bright as to turn night into daylight at a distance of 100 kilometers (62 miles), and can be compared to the light of a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere,” the institute said. “However, we stress that there is no reason to believe (it was) other than natural causes.”
Lt. Col. Dennis Goldsmith of the U.S. Space Command near Colorado Springs said the object was not a spacecraft or other artificial debris re-entering the atmosphere.
NORSAR reported tremors that “are assumed to relate to the impact or the passage of the meteorite through the atmosphere.” Fainter signals were detected in Finland and Germany.
A video taken by a parking-lot surveillance camera in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, and shown repeatedly on Danish television, is reported to have recorded a bright flash of light from a moving source reflected in the curved hood of a car.
Based on the trawler sightings plus observations of the light track from Nuuk, the point of impact was fixed at 61 degrees 25 minutes north latitude and 44 degrees 26 minutes west longitude. Scientists have been checking satellite data for further evidence, and are attempting to survey the impact zone using radar satellites and an ice reconnaissance plane flying between Kap Farvel and Nuuk.
xxxx LANDING SITE The impact zone, if there is one, is estimated to be a remote and forbidding site about 30 miles northeast of Narsarsuaq Airport, near a town called Qaqortoq.