Heard the boom? Local astrophysicist explains the meteor that caused it

BOSTON — It was the sonic boom heard across New England Saturday.

Did you hear it? Meteor causes loud boom heard all throughout the North East

The sound was a meteor entering the atmosphere. To find out more, Boston 25 reached out to Harvard Astrophysicist Avi Loeb.

“The meteor was roughly the size of one meter, half the height of a person. It was moving at a hundred times the speed of sound, about 33KM per second,” Loeb said.

Avi says the sound of the meteor hitting the earth’s atmosphere and exploding.

The meteor entered the atmosphere 31 miles above the Earth, with a force equal to around 230 tons of TNT. All of this over the waters of Cape Cod Bay.

NASA says meteorite that fell may be located in Cape Cod Bay

“The only way to identify objects before they hit the earth is the reflection of sunlight,” Loeb said. “Our telescopes cannot detect it until it enters our atmosphere and produces a fireball that can be detected not only on the ground, but by satellite.”

Scientists believe it was a huge asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. By comparison this meteor was tiny. Avi says if it exploded over land, the damage would have been minimal.

“No,” said Avi Loeb. “Meteors of this size usually burn most of their mass, but fragments, small fragments end up on the ground. If they hit you, obviously, they could kill you, but the chance of that is extremely small,” Loeb said.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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