While debates are still ongoing about the meteorite impact theory that killed a person in south Indian city of Vellore, NASA has now come up with a curious case of huge meteorite impact in the Atlantic, surprisingly on the same day.
In the report by NASA’s Near Earth Object program, which emerged roughly two weeks after the impact, it is confirmed that a bright meteorite zoomed into earth on February 6. According to the report it touched the ocean surface, 620 miles away from Brazil’s coast at 1:55 p.m GMT.
Screenshot from http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/
The impact in south Atlantic ocean is likely to have caused an explosion having an energy release of 13 Kilo Tonnes. It is considered to be equivalent to the explosion of 13,000 tonnes of trinitrotoluene (TNT).
On the same day, another meteorite had struck Vellore, killing a bus driver – Kamaraj and injuring two others at a college campus there. However, New York Times quoted Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA, calling the impact ‘highly unlikely’ one. Nevertheless, Tamil Nadu state government stood firm in its claims.
Folomojo brought the incident to the notice of researchers in Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIAP) in Bengaluru who has been studying the nature of object which impacted in Vellore. Sujan K. Sengupta, Associate Professor at IIAP ascertained that the object they received for testing did not have the characteristics of meteorite.
“The sample we got from Vellore after testing found out to be not meteorite. We found it to be magnetic and could be an iron ore.” he said
He pointed out that two incidents should not be necessarily related as several hundreds of small meteors enter the earth’s atmosphere.
“But we might have got the wrong sample, as I did not go to the site in person, so cannot comment on that. We will need to wait for the results from other institutes to confirm. But if we are to believe the witnesses, there are chances that it can be a meteorite impact as the characteristics were similar,” he went on to say.
A meteorite is a rock that was formed elsewhere in the solar system, orbiting the sun or a planet for a long time, and eventually captured by Earth’s gravitational field to hit the surface of Earth.
