Rendered at 01:42:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
1 hours ago [-]
pithon 17 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 1 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.
1970-01-01 36 minutes ago [-]
>The shockwave comes from meteor's movement alone, the parts never move apart with any speed comparable to their common forward motion..
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.
quuxplusone 1 hours ago [-]
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 44 minutes ago [-]
We are not disassembling, we are assembling in another time direction.
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.
PSA is false.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/watch-the-skies/2026/03/26/its-fi...
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_air_burst