Officials in Spartanburg County said a large boom heard by many people in the Upstate Monday morning may be a meteor.
Law enforcement officials saw a large ball of fire that popped in the air around 1:45 a.m. Monday. Viewers from Greenville to Cherokee Counties called 7 On Your Side saying they heard the noise and their homes shook. No one was hurt.
Calls poured in to dispatchers across the Upstate soon after. Some said it sounded like a crash. Others said they thought someone was kicking in their door.
The National Weather Service tells 7 On Your Side it was most likely something speeding toward Earth from outer space. It could have been moving as fast as 10 times the speed of sound.
"Thank God for the atmosphere," says Doug Gegen.
Gegan is Staff Astronomer at the Roper Mountain Science Center and says something like the noise some heard overnight is worth noting.
"To have something out of the ordinary like this thing was last night would be very unusual," he adds.
Even a handful of gravel that enters the Earth’s atmosphere at speeds much greater than the speed of sound will create a spectacular light show and make noise; such particles would likely not survive the trip down as they would all burn up along the way.
Millions of these enter the atmosphere every day; most of the ones that cause sky flashes are only pebble/gravel sized and unlikely to survive the trip to land.
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