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I thought they were not supposed to be this hot by the time they got to the ground, but maybe not? Or maybe just coincidence.

But if that was a meteorite, it should be in the rubble somewhere and could be worth some decent money for that guy, given the circumstances.

 

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No one is asking if it could be space junk (broken up satellite re-entry)?

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Space just woke up and decided "screw this random dude in particular today".  

18 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

No one is asking if it could be space junk (broken up satellite re-entry)?

Oddly, there was a fireball spotted over my town in Wyoming a few nights before. I got the bright light (lit half the sky up) on one of my security cams at one of my properties, but the fireball itself was just off cam so I have no idea what direction it went, it was low though, hit around here somewhere.

We might be passing through a debris field of junk or small asteroids or something right now?

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11 hours ago, jasong said:

We might be passing through a debris field of junk or small asteroids or something right now?

You might want to check out this website.  Among other things they publish an annual Calendar (should be able to download by clicking the appropriate year along the right hand margin).  You can see at the top of the page there are four meteor showers currently active.

Afterthought:  Meteorites are rarely from comets.  Meteor showers (what I linked) are caused by the earth passing through the orbit of a comet.  Comet debris gets sublimated, etc. before reaching the ground.

 

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3 hours ago, kac said:

Doesn't the fireball exist only when the object passes through the atmosphere?

Impact like that you would think would leave a crater.

I believe that in general by the time a meteorite hits the ground it's just falling at terminal velocity in air and no longer going at hypervelocities, so generally don't leave massive craters (at least, no bigger than if you dropped it from a building tall enough to reach terminal velocity). And that's part of the reason why they are supposedly not firey hot when they hit the ground too.

But I suppose if it's a fireball all the way to ground impact, it's still going fast and could leave a crater. The one that flew over where I live looked to be pretty dang low, I could even hear a noise on my security camera as it passed, and it was still a fireball. 

If it's ice fragments from comets then different story I guess. They have rock components to them too though. But how freaking cool would it be to find an ice fragment from a comet still intact before it melts and keep that thing in freezer. Only person on Earth with a chunk of comet ice. I wonder if that's even possible, maybe not. It'd be interesting to see what's in that sort of water though, space rain.

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The reason I doubt what occurred was a meteorite starting a fire is that rocks (space or otherwise) tend to be poor conductors of heat.  When a stony meteoroid gets hot, it's the outer surface that heats up, not the interior.  The associated ablative action is similar to heat shields placed on spacecraft designed to re-enter the atmosphere.  Keep the heat on a surface; don't let it propogate to the sensitive interior.  According to this article, iron meteorites make up 5.7% of witnessed meteorite falls, but are more likely to survive due to their conductive composition.  Could the source of the fire been an iron meteorite?

A piece of metal (e.g. from a satellite with its orbit so degraded it gets dragged back into the atmosphere)?  If metallic the entire chunk gets hot.  Does it cool enough in the lower part of the atmosphere when it slows down?  IDK.  (Same question applies to iron meteorites.)  But as Jason mentioned, stony meteorites are not only cool, some have ice on them, from frozen condensation in the cold atmosphere after they've been slowed to terminal velocity.

Another possibility that should not be ignored (more research at the site should help) -- random coincidence -- also mentioned in Jason's post that started this thread.  TV news (well, lots of other sources, too) often accentuate the unusual/exciting and ignore mundane causes.  Likewise eyewitnesses often also project their hopes into their reports, distorting whatever evidence can be derirved from them.

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