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American Morning

Fireball Amazes Northeastern Witnesses

Aired July 24, 2001 - 11:50   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.
BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: We're still trying to nail down the cause of that fireball that streaked across the Northeastern sky last night. Richard Berendzen is a professor of Astronomy at American University and he joins us now with his insights from Washington. Mr. Berendzen, thanks for being with us. Let's hear your take on this thing. Did you see it first of all?

RICHARD BERENDZEN, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: No, I did not see it, but it certainly did stir up a great deal of attention on the East Coast. I think it probably was a bolide, which is a large object which enters the Earth's atmosphere and explodes. It need not necessarily be large. But given the sound of this one, it was something like an airplane reaching Mach one.

NELSON: Now, can you determine the size from that? Some people saying it may be the size of a baseball, other are saying it's the size of a Jeep?

BERENDZEN: Well, I think that the best way to...

NELSON: While you are talking about it, we are looking at some pictures that one of our viewers managed to take at a field, I think it's in Pennsylvania. This is where the part of the object may have come down in a cornfield. So, go ahead.

BERENDZEN: Well, what I hope that they can do is actually find the object because if they do it, it will be scientifically really quite interesting. It will be an old ancestor. It would be like your great-great grandmother, perhaps a million times removed, coming back to visit. This thing is from the beginning of the solar system, about 4 1/2 billion years ago.

It contains perhaps organic material that's carbon-based, that's the very stub of life. We probably have such material in our bodies from former hits which have occurred and they occur all of the time. But the vast majority of them we do not see because they hit in the oceans or in the polar regions or in the desert. But this one, we did see, and what I desperately hope is they find it and find all of the chunks, given that it exploded, it probably fragmented into quite a few.

NELSON: What make you so sure it's an exploding meteorite and not just a man-made object, maybe a piece of a satellite. BERENDZEN: It could indeed be that. The only thing there is that those are tracked very carefully out of Colorado, and they're tracked in the same way that the old military hardware used to be tracked and so far, at least, we have gotten no signs that such a device was coming to the Earth's atmosphere.

On the other hand, this does very much fit the usual profile of a fireball or a bolide. In fact, they go all the way back to biblical times. In the Book of Joshua in the Bible it even refers to such a streak, and you can imagine the terror that it would have brought to the people then.

NELSON: All right, well listen, thanks for your insights this morning. Richard Berendzen from American University, we appreciate it very much.

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