Mysterious fireball seen in US skies

From Georgia to South Carolina and Tennessee, a mysterious flaming object could be seen streaking the sky Thursday afternoon, leaving a trail of exhaust in its wake, and then dramatically plunking toward the ground.

Scientists, meteorologists and even law enforcement officials in those states were working to figure out what had caught the attention of drivers and observers in such a wide swath of the South. The sightings prompted hundreds of calls to authorities.

It was not clear if it was a meteorite, space debris or something else. But whatever it was, a small object that may have broken off from it punched through the roof of a home just south of Atlanta, cracking the home's laminate flooring.

Keith Stellman, the meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service in Atlanta, said that authorities could not yet confirm if it was indeed a piece of a meteor or "space junk or a broken piece of satellite," but they collected it as evidence.

"It happened around the same time we started getting reports of a possible earthquake and some people saying they were hearing thunder," Stellman said.

There were about 130 reports of fireball sightings in 20 states, according to the American Meteor Society, beginning just after noon. It was not clear how many of those were related to the event seen on videos circulating Thursday.

"It looks to be a 'daytime fireball' that caused a sonic boom," said Mike Hankey, the operations manager at the American Meteor Society. "This is usually indicative of a meteorite dropping fireball, but not always."

A fireball is a very bright meteor -- generally brighter than the planet Venus -- in the morning or evening sky, according to the American Meteor Society.

"If they're bright enough and far away enough from the sky, certainly you can see a fireball," said Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society, who tracks and verifies fireball reports worldwide. "On a personal level, it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but we might get one per month."

In Georgia and South Carolina, observers even called 911 to report the flying object, according to local news outlets.

Stellman said residents across eastern metro Atlanta reported shaking, loud booms and windows rattling.

Fireballs start becoming visible at 50 miles altitude, Lunsford said, and they disintegrate at about 25 miles altitude.

"It takes a really, really big fireball to make it to the ground, and all that's left is pebbles."

The American Meteor Society receives an average of 100 reported sightings per day, Lunsford said. About 25 might be of the same object, he said, and the other 75 are of the debris created by that object.

"If they look like they're close, that's due to the velocity with which they're striking the atmosphere," he said, adding that their range of speed is 15 to 50 miles per second.

Artificial objects, like satellites and rockets, are far slower. If an object can be seen for more than five seconds, it's not a meteor, he emphasized.

The weather service office in Charleston, South Carolina, said on its social media page that its satellite-based lightning detection system showed "a streak within cloud free sky" over the border between North Carolina and Virginia, over Gasburg, Virginia.

The office said the streak was detected between 11:51 a.m. and 11:56 a.m. local time.

"Whatever traveled through the sky, it remains a mystery," Doug Outlaw, a meteorologist from the weather service office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina.

The Federal Aviation Administration in a statement said "we have no reports of unusual aircraft activity in the area."

An estimated 40 to 100 tons of space material strike Earth every day, and most of it is very small particles, according to the European Space Agency.