'Star Gazer' host talks about fireball in Northeast skies

Horkheimer

CNN Anchor Brian Nelson spoke Tuesday morning with Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Planetarium and host of the PBS series "Star Gazer," about the fireball that lit up the Northeastern U.S. sky on Monday. Witnesses said the object apparently landed in a Pennsylvania cornfield, leaving it scorched.

NELSON: All right, what do you think it was? And did you see any signs of it down in Miami?

HORKHEIMER: No, I haven't heard any reports from Miami, and I just learned from you people that it came down and scorched a field. So, we'd have to wait and find out what the object is, what it's made of before we can definitely say what it is.

Without seeing it, it could be one of three things. It could be -- it could be just a piece of space debris, man-made space debris that's re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. That happens frequently. Or it could be from a meteor shower or just a stray asteroid, meteoroid. People have been calling it a bolide, and what a bolide is ... is just a meteor or an asteroid that explodes and makes a sound. If it makes a sound, we call it a bolide.

So, it was definitely a bolide, but we don't know at this point, until it's picked up, whether it's natural or if it's an asteroid traveling through our solar system for about 4 1/2 billion years, if it was an asteroid.

NELSON: Mr. Horkheimer, let's start with the size of this thing. Some people say it was the size of a Jeep, others say it could be size of a baseball.

HORKHEIMER: Right.

NELSON: What could account for what people saw and the amount of noise that they heard?

NELSON: That's a wonderful question. When you have a small object, traveling at incredibly high velocities and slamming into the Earth's atmosphere, the Earth's atmosphere -- the defriction with a speeding object makes the object heat up so much that it can internally fracture and turn into what we call a fireball, and you don't need a big object. Something the size of a golf ball, a baseball or even basketball could look as big as a Jeep or a flaming bus. It would just give that illusion.

Only after you recover something that's landed on ground will you be able to tell how big the original piece is. Most of these fireballs and the ones that explode, the ones we call bolides, turn out to be the size of a grapefruit or basketballs or smaller. And if you find one...

NELSON: It's worth a lot of money, isn't it?

HORKHEIMER: Yes, it's kind of like -- it's not diamond rocks from outer space, but it certainly is asteroid outer space rocks that have monetary value.

NELSON: The reason it is valuable is because it's so old, isn't it?

HORKHEIMER: Well, because it's old and because it's documented. When you actually see something come through the sky, hear it explode and can find a chunk of it, you've got a documented fall. And that's where the value comes in. Some people actually cut them up and make them into jewelry.

NELSON: Do you think the pieces could be as old as 4 billion years old, which would put it about the start of the solar system?

HORKHEIMER: That's right. Our solar system began 4 1/2 billion years ago and these asteroid meteors are -- were formed at the same time. They're the stuff that's left over from the solar system, the stuff that didn't turn into planets. So these are circling all the time. There are thousands of them in space, and every once in a while, our Earth and one of these things, their orbits intersect and bang, we see a fireball. They are not as uncommon, though, as one thinks.

NELSON: That's what I was going to ask you. It's not unique because a lot of times these will fall over the ocean and nobody will hear. You know that old story of if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, didn't happen, right?

(LAUGHTER)

HORKHEIMER: That is really right. Our Earth is two-thirds water, and of course, the North Pole and the South Pole, not a lot of people live there. So, one of these occurs at least every day, one of these fireballs, it's just that over a populated area where people are seeing it and in daylight, that doesn't happen that often. But you're lucky to see it, even luckier if you can find a piece and keep it and perhaps sell it. And unlucky if it falls on you.

NELSON: Now, let me ask you about this: If that was one single piece, let's say it's a rock or something, let's contrast that with the possibility of a real meteor shower; that is, maybe hundreds of these pieces coming down all at once. What would be the difference and what would be the danger to us if we were in the same position, up in the Northeast, yesterday afternoon?

HORKHEIMER: Meteor showers don't have a lot of these big things in them. That's the wonderful part about meteor showers. After meteor showers have been around for thousands of years, most of these big things are weeded out. So, we're lucky. If that did happen, there would be problem, but chances of that are extremely, extremely rare.

There is one meteor shower that's going on right now that has an occasional what they call slow-moving fireball and bolides, and that's the Capricornids, which are maybe one of three that are going on right now. That seems to be a likely candidate if it's part of a meteor shower. Or it could be just a -- we call a meteor stray, a stray visitor. Some of these have been photographed passing across the sky where many people have seen them. I just hope whoever finds it gets it examined right away to determine whether or not it is asteroid meteor. As I said, when it makes a sound, we classify it as a bolide, and it would break up into several chunks, of course. That's what makes the sound when it explodes and breaks up into more than one chunk.