00:00A fireball crashing down through Earth's atmosphere in California and another streaking
00:05through the sky in Ohio, causing a massive sonic boom that was heard as far as New York.
00:13A part of a meteor even broke off in Texas and smashed through the roof of a Houston home.
00:18And there's a big rock on the floor and it just scared me to death. And I'm like,
00:23everybody back out, get out the room. I said, I don't know what this is,
00:26but I said, this might be a meteor. Why has there been a spike in what
00:30scientists call large fireball meteor events? And why can't experts agree on the cause?
00:36Here's what you need to know. On March 17th, a six-foot-wide, seven-ton space rock
00:41burst across northeast Ohio around 9 a.m., creating a sonic boom and shockwave that shook
00:47houses in the suburbs of Cleveland. The Ohio meteor's stunning atmospheric entrance was one of five
00:53fireball events reported to the American Meteor Society in March that recorded more than 200
00:58reports, the largest number of reports than all other reports in March combined since 2011.
01:04According to the AMS, which relies on public submissions to its meteor reporting system,
01:10the first quarter of 2026 has been rife with meteor spottings, with a spike in what scientists call
01:15large fireball events, or meteors that appear brighter than the planet Venus in the night sky.
01:21Regular everyday space rocks are actually pelting Earth constantly, day and night,
01:26but the ones that brightly light up in the sky and create sonic booms are much more noticeable.
01:31Dr. Nick Moskovitz, a planetary astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona,
01:37who studies small bodies in the solar system like asteroids, comets, and meteors,
01:41says the Earth adds about 100 tons of mass every day because of planetary debris raining down.
01:48If you were to go out on a random night, not necessarily a peak meteor shower night,
01:52but just pick a random night throughout the year and go out and look up for a couple hours,
01:56you would on average be expecting to see with your eyes something like 10 meteors per hour.
02:02And that's sort of like the average background for a given site.
02:05The 10 meteors per hour that I would see here in Arizona would be different from the 10 meteors
02:10per hour you would see in New York or some other location.
02:13But that's sort of the approximate background of how many meteors per hour you can get.
02:19But a new report from the New York Times has highlighted a curious spike in the AMS's reporting system.
02:25In January, February, and March of 2026, 40 fireball events were spotted by 50 or more people,
02:32double the average from those same months from 2021 to 2025.
02:3633 of those fireballs even produced a sonic boom, which suggests the meteors were on the larger size.
02:43An analysis from the AMS went further showing that although January and February had noticeable increases,
02:49March was where, quote, the signal becomes unmistakable.
02:52The non-profit reported March's average witness count increased almost three times
02:56than their last highest March record in 2021.
02:59And scientists and meteor enthusiasts are stumped about the supposed increase.
03:04Annual meteor showers are expected and predicted, such as Geminids in December and Perseids in August,
03:11when the Earth passes through both comets' trails of dust.
03:14One meteor physicist told the New York Times that it was unlikely the March fireballs could be from something
03:19like an undiscovered meteor shower, since the space rocks didn't plunge through the atmosphere in a consistent manner.
03:25At the end of March, NASA posted a blog post about the spike, writing that it wasn't, quote,
03:30out of the ordinary for there to be a bump in fireball sightings.
03:33The space org said from February through April, bright meteors are spotted 10 to 30 percent more.
03:39Though scientists aren't exactly sure why the cosmic phenomenon occurs.
03:43Right now, in the sort of March-April time frame, this is a time of the year that we sort
03:49of think of as fireball season.
03:51And so this is a time of year where we get a lot of sporadic meteors coming in,
03:55so not associated with showers, but just sort of randomly coming in.
03:58And they tend to be, on average, a little bit brighter than normal.
04:01And for whatever reason, we don't fully understand, or this is something scientists are working on,
04:07is we don't fully understand why March and April see an increase in the number of fireballs.
04:13And this year in particular, we're seeing the sort of, not just the normal increase,
04:16but even a slightly higher increase than normal, which is within the range of expectations.
04:23It's not like we're seeing a crazy number that we can't explain.
04:26It's sort of, you know, year in and year out, when you're dealing with sporadic events, random events,
04:31and some years are going to be more active than others.
04:33And this year, 2026, March-April, definitely has produced a bit more fireballs than normal.
04:38But astrophotographer and meteor observer Mike Hanke, who helps maintain the AMS website,
04:44told the outlet that NASA's 10 to 30 percent increase was already included in the organization's numbers
04:49and didn't explain the doubling.
04:51So what could have caused the apparent jump in meteor reports?
04:54Dr. Moskovitz thinks buzz about NASA's recent Artemis II mission could potentially be an explanation.
05:00The bottom line is we don't necessarily have the answer, and that makes it very interesting.
05:06I mean, things that have been in the news lately, like Artemis,
05:09means that people are probably looking up to the night sky a little bit more than average
05:13and happen to be looking in that right place at the right time and notice that fireball go by.
05:18That's certainly influencing this, but it's hard to know exactly to the extent that, you know,
05:22how many more people are looking up into the night sky and noticing things
05:25that maybe were there last year and went unnoticed.
05:28On top of people's interest in space peaking with the Artemis II mission,
05:32more cameras are also out in the world, constantly recording.
05:35NASA wrote in its blog post that with smartphones, doorbells, and dashcams,
05:40it's easier than ever to capture these quick, cosmic happenings.
05:43A meteoroid engineering model expert at NASA's Meteoroid Environments office
05:48shared a non-peer-reviewed statistical analysis with the Times,
05:52showing the long-term trend of meteor sightings to the AMS since 2011.
05:56The data reportedly showed that although meteor sightings were heightened,
06:00it wasn't an out-of-the-ordinary number.
06:03Hanke, though, scoffed at the assessment, ruling that the meteor sighting surge was, quote,
06:07not an awareness trend.
06:09And although it might be fun to imagine,
06:11Dr. Moskovitz also thinks an alien explanation is extremely unlikely.
06:15So whenever unusual things happen in the night sky, the topic of aliens is brought up.
06:22It's inevitable for, you know, the human imagination to go in that direction.
06:26And fortunately, in this particular set of phenomena that we're witnessing right now,
06:30with increased meteor counts and increased fireballs,
06:32we don't need to go to exotic explanations.
06:34We think we understand these objects reasonably well.
06:37There's nothing necessarily unusual about these fireballs that we're seeing come in.
06:41They're the typical size, the typical brightness in the night sky, the typical velocity.
06:48Everything about them is typical.
06:49It's just we're seeing slightly elevated rates, again, within the range of expectations,
06:56but still slightly elevated relative to previous years.
06:59And again, it's probably due to a number of factors,
07:01including just increased awareness by the public
07:03as they're out looking into the night sky a bit more than average.
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