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CNN Live At Daybreak

Fireball Lights Up Eastern Sky

Aired July 24, 2001 - 08:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get started with a space mystery. What was that fireball that lit up the sky over the East Coast last night? It streaked across the sky around 6:30 Eastern time. People haven't stopped talking about it since.

The fireball may have ended up in Larry's Creek. That's near Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Witnesses say that they saw a ball of fire fall into a corn field. Others who saw it still can't believe their eyes. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED EYEWITNESS: See little grains of salt like shooting through the sky. This was like a big fiery object going through the sky. It was wild. It was a ball of fire, and it had to have had a lot of flame behind it. It looked like something you would see from, you know, from the movies really.

UNIDENTIFIED EYEWITNESS: Yes, we saw this thing in the sky. And he mentioned it. He said, "Something's in the sky." And we looked. And it was just kind of a ball of fire and just a bunch of different colors coming down through the sky. And it just came down through. And then you heard maybe some little screaming noise. And when we looked at it afterwards, it hurt our eyes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCEDWARDS: Well, some great descriptions, but now the experts are trying to figure out exactly what it was.

CNN's science correspondent Ann Kellan joins us from Boston to give us a little more on this celestial mystery.

Do they know what it is yet?

ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: No, we don't know what it is yet. And basically, this is not that uncommon. We see -- when you see shooting stars, that's basically little meteors going through the atmosphere.

Usually -- what's unusual about this is, one, it hit over a populated area. So a lot of people saw it. And usually things like this will land in the ocean. And the other thing is that it actually hit the Earth. Usually they do burn up in the atmosphere. MCEDWARDS: So is it interesting enough to scientists that maybe someone is going to go out and look for what's left of it? Or is this pretty common stuff?

KELLAN: No, I'm sure there is going to be a lot of interest in this. And if there was -- they say that there was traces left, and I am sure they will be examining that.

What they probably are looking for is to see whether it had any water -- traces of water in it, which would be a comet -- or if it is an asteroid, which is mostly made of rock and metal. So I am sure there's a lot of curiosity about what exactly it was.

MCEDWARDS: How devastating can this kind of thing be, whatever it is -- stuff falling from the sky?

KELLAN: Well, let's look at, you know, when you see -- think of meteor showers, we have those every year. The Leonid meteor showers when the Earth passes through the tail of a comet's debris that the comet is orbiting and the earth passes through its debris. So we see a lot of meteor showers. And a Perseid is another meteor shower that's occurring or it's going to peak August 12. So that's on the lighter side. These are about the size of a grain of sand.

In the early developments of Earth, big rocks were hitting the Earth all the time causing crater-like hits. And they are much more dramatic. And they cause devastating effects from even say it could have -- one of them could have wiped out the dinosaurs.

MCEDWARDS: You know, we have heard people talking about a loud boom and the sound it makes, and I was reading on the wire copy this morning, it's described as a sonic boom.

KELLAN: Yes. And you remember when Mir entered the Earth, when it came to Earth earlier this year, that people said that it created this loud noise. And that's what happens when it hits the -- when it enters -- an object enters the atmosphere, it creates this loud noise. So that's probably what people was hearing.

And it also, this was big enough to cause some kind of burn marks in the ground, so this was a good size.

MCEDWARDS: All right -- lots to look at. CNN's Ann Kellan, thanks very much.

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