A Meteor Exploded Above New England With the Force of 300 Tons of TNT. Here’s What It Looked Like.

If you were in Massachusetts this past Saturday afternoon and briefly thought the world was coming to an end, don’t worry; it was just the sonic boom of a meteor tearing through the Earth’s atmosphere. Sounds apocalyptic, but it was mostly harmless, other than the huge, terrifying sound and all the shaking.

According to NASA, as reported by NBC News, a meteor streaked over New England at roughly 75,000 miles per hour before breaking apart high above northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire around 2:06 p.m. The space rock fragmented about 40 miles above the ground, releasing energy equivalent to roughly 300 tons of TNT.

The explosion happened far above the surface of the Earth, meaning no debris struck the ground, and no injuries or damage were reported. What people did experience was the side effect of an object moving faster than the speed of sound. As the meteor burned through the atmosphere and disintegrated, it generated pressure waves that produced a powerful sonic boom heard across New England.

The meteor was detected by both regular folk who did not expect to shit themselves so thoroughly on a Saturday afternoon, as well as NOAA’s GOES-19 weather satellite, which captured pics of the fireball as it crossed the sky. NASA officially classified it as a meteor, and a particularly bright one, noting that it was not connected to any active meteor shower. It was just a rogue bit of rock, and not something potentially more dangerous like an errant reentering piece of space junk, or an old satellite, or some other man-made object that might shred apart and not disintegrate.

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said public safety officials received reports of both the boom and the subsequent earthquake-like tremors it caused. The U.S. Geological Survey likewise confirmed there was no earthquake, describing the phenomenon as a widely felt sonic boom from a “suspected bolide,” the term used for especially bright meteors that explode in the atmosphere.

The post A Meteor Exploded Above New England With the Force of 300 Tons of TNT. Here’s What It Looked Like. appeared first on VICE.