WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The large rumble that Hoosiers heard throughout five south-central Indiana counties is looking more and more like it was a meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere from space.
Brandon Johnson is an associate professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, and tells WISH-TV that all the evidence so far is pointing to it being a large fireball or “air burst” from outer space.
“It is pretty uncommon to have an air burst that is large enough to make a loud explosion-type sound,” he said. It does happen from time to time. Usually, it happens over the ocean or unpopulated areas, so sometimes it happens where people are around.”
Johnson said an air blast is when a meteor essentially explodes upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere. He describes it as a rock disintegrating when thrown really hard at a brick wall.
Since it was overcast the day it happened there was no video evidence of the fireball, but several places caught the sound of it on surveillance video cameras. Reports submitted to the American Meteor Society said the meteorite was likely traveling from south to north.
Johnson said that as more research comes in on it he might get the chance to head south to areas where it was heard with the possibility of looking for fragments of the meteorite to see what it was made of.
He predicts it was a small meteor, likely a bolder no more than three feet wide.
