Rare daytime fireball bright enough to be seen from orbit may have punched a hole in a house in Georgia
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
A large meteor that triggered a spectacular daytime fireball over the southeastern U.S. may have survived its dramatic passage through Earth's atmosphere to punch through the roof of a Georgia home.
The fireball was spotted over the southeastern U.S. at 12:25 EDT on Friday, (1625 GMT), visibly flaring as the extreme heat of atmospheric friction overwhelmed the ancient chunk of solar system debris. Its descent was bright enough to be seen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAAs) GOES-19 Earth observation satellite, using an instrument designed to map flashes of lightning from orbit.
"Daylight fireballs are rare in that it takes a large object (larger than a beachball compared to your normal pea-sized meteor) to be bright enough to be seen during the day," said Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Association in an email to Space.com. "We probably only average one per month worldwide, so perhaps one out of every 3,000 reports occurs during the day."
The meteor was first spotted 48 miles (77 kilometers) above the town of Oxford, Georgia travelling at around 30,000 mph (48,000 km/h), according to NASA Meteoroid Environment Office lead Bill Cooke, via CBS News. Lunsford noted that the fireball may have been associated with the daylight beta Taurid shower, which peaks in late June as Earth passes through the trail of cosmic debris shed by the ancient solar system comet 2P/Encke.
Footage of the event led many to speculate that fragments of the meteor may have survived its bruising passage through Earth's atmosphere. The hours that followed saw photos circulate online purporting to show the damage that a fragment of the meteorite caused when it smashed through the roof of a home in Henry County, Georgia.
"Being much larger than your average meteor also means that it has a better chance of producing fragments on the ground," explained Lunsford "We look for reports of sound such as thunder or sonic booms to have confidence that fragments of the original fireball survived down to the lower atmosphere and perhaps all the way to the ground. Therefore the photograph of the hole in the roof is probably associated with this fireball."
If verified, the Georgia meteorite certainly wouldn't represent the first time that a daylight beta Daylight Taurid left a mark on our planet. Lunsford noted that a particularly large meteor that some scientists believe to be associated with the annual shower detonated in a powerful airburst 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) over Russian Siberia in June 1908. The force of the explosion sparked massive forest fires and flattened roughly 80 million trees in what has since become known as the 'Tunguska Event'.
Editor's Note: If you capture a photo or video footage of a meteor and want to share it with Space.com's readers, then please send it, along with your name, comments, and details of your experience to spacephotos@space.com.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
37 minutes ago
- Forbes
Quantum, Moore's Law, And AI's Future
microchip integrated on motherboard In the game of AI acceleration, there are several key moving parts. One of them is hardware: what do the chips look like? And this is a very interesting question. Another is quantum computing: what role will it play? Another is scaling. Everyone from CEOs and investors to engineers is scrambling to figure out what the future looks like, but we got a few ideas from a recent panel at Imagination in Action that assembled some of the best minds on the matter. WSE and the Dinner Plate of Reasoning Not too long ago, I wrote about the Cerebras WSE chip, a mammoth piece of silicon about the size of a dinner plate, that is allowing the centralization of large language model efforts. This is an impressive piece of hardware by any standard, and has a role in coalescing the vanguard of what we are doing with AI hardware. In the aforementioned panel discussion, Julie Choi from Cerebras started by showing off the company's WSE superchip, noting that some call it the 'caviar of inference.' (I thought that was funny.) 'I think that as we evolve, we're just going to see even more innovative, novel approaches at the hardware architecture level,' she said. 'The optimization space is extremely large,' said Dinesh Maheshwari, discussing architecture and compute units. 'So I encourage everyone to look at it.' Panelist Caleb Sirak, also of MIT, talked about ownership of hardware. 'As the models themselves start to change, how can businesses themselves integrate them directly and get them for a fair price, but also convert that AI, and the energy involved, into a productive utility?' 'What is a computer, and what can a computer do?' asked Alexander Keesling, explaining his company's work on hardware. 'We took the fundamental unit of matter, a single atom, and turned it into the fundamental unit of information, which is a quantum bit … a quantum computer is the first time in human history where we can take advantage of the fundamental properties of nature to do something that is different and more powerful.' Jeremy Kepner of MIT's Lincoln Lab had some thoughts on the singularity of computing – not the race toward AGI, but a myopic centralization of an overarching 'operation.' 'Every single computer in the high end that we built for the last many decades has only done one operation,' he said. 'So there's a lot to unpack there, but it's for very deep mathematical and physics reasons: that's the only operation we've ever been able to figure out how to accelerate over many decades. And so what I often tell the users is, the computer picks the application. AI happens to be acceleratable by that operation.' He urged the audience to move forward in a particular way. 'Think about whatever you want to do, and if you can accelerate it with that kind of mathematical operation, you know the sky is the limit on what you can do,' he said. 'And someone in your field will figure it out, and they will move ahead dramatically.' Engineering Challenges and AI Opportunities The panel also mentioned some of the headwinds that innovators must contend with. On the other hand, Jeff Grover noted the near-term ability of systems to evolve. 'We're actually quite excited about this,' he said. The Software End Panelists discussed the relevance of software and the directions that coding is going in. 'Programming languages are built for people,' Sirak said. 'How do you actually change that to build languages and tools that AI can use?' Choi mentioned benchmarks like inference rates of 2900 tokens per second for Llama 4. 'Open source models are rich for developers,' she said. 'What that's doing is building a bridge between the bravest developers. I would say the early adopters tend to be very courageous, and they're willing to code on things that they've never seen before.' The Fast Car Several panelists talked about a particular metaphor to a Ferrari, with Choi referencing 'Ferrari-level' speeds for the Cerebras chip. Maheshwari talked about 'exotic' chips, and design from an architecture paradigm, comparing certain builds to 'picking up groceries in a Ferrari.' He also mentioned the imperative of keeping the technology 'street legal.' Moore's Law and Progress Kepner talked about being surprised by what computers can do, and the size of investment in the industry. Moore's law, he said, implied an upper limit for spending. He predicted another decade of efficiencies, and cited the Ozaki scheme, a matrix method for preserving precision in calculations. What About Quantum? 'I think that the first area where we're going to see quantum computing impact is going to be in research,' Keesling said. 'These problems, at their core, are (about) trying to answer what happens when atoms and electrons interact with one another and develop these emergent behaviors … how we think about chemistry, how we think about drug interactions, how we think about material properties, all comes from electrons and atoms moving.' There was a lot to unpack in this panel discussion, including details on how we're going to achieve progress in the next few years. The Ozaki Scheme Going back to this matrix idea, I was not familiar with this term, so I looked it up and asked ChatGPT to describe it in basic English. 'It's named after Makoto Ozaki, the person who came up with the idea,' the model told me. 'He found a smart way to do very accurate math (like multiplying big grids of numbers) using fast but less accurate tools (like low-precision numbers). His method splits the work into small, simple steps and then carefully puts the pieces back together to get the exact right answer.' Going further, ChatGPT, just to be nice, even gave me a medieval storyline to show how the Ozaki scheme works, and to contrast it to other alternatives. I'm just going to print that here, because it's interesting. The Tale of the Kingdom of Matrixland In the kingdom of Matrixland, the royal court has a big job: multiplying giant tables of numbers (called matrices). But the royal calculator is slow when it uses fancy, high-precision numbers. So the King holds a contest: 'Who can multiply big matrices both quickly and accurately?' Sir Ozaki's Clever Trick Sir Ozaki, a wise mathematician, enters the contest. He says: 'I'll break each matrix into small, easy pieces that the royal calculator can handle quickly. Then I'll multiply those simple parts and put them back together perfectly.' The crowd gasps! His method is fast and still gives the exact right answer. The King declares it the Ozaki Scheme. The Other Contestants But other knights have tricks too: Lady Refina (Iterative Refinement) She does the quick math first, then checks her work. If it's off, she fixes it — again and again — until it's just right. She's very accurate, but takes more time. Sir Compenso (Compensated Summation) He notices small errors that get dropped during math and catches them before they vanish. He's good at adding accurately, but can't handle full matrix multiplication like Ozaki. Lady Mixie (Mixed Precision) She charges in with super speed, using tiny fast numbers (like FP8 or FP16). Her answers aren't perfect, but they're 'good enough' for training the kingdom's magical beasts (AI models). Baron TensorFloat (TF32) He uses a special number format invented by the kingdom's engineers. Faster than full precision, but not as sharp as Ozaki. A favorite of the castle's GPU-powered wizard lab. The Ending Sir Ozaki's method is the most exact while still using fast tools. Others are faster or simpler, but not always perfect. The King declares: 'All of these knights are useful, depending on the task. But if you want both speed and the exact answer, follow Sir Ozaki's path!' Anyway, you have a range of ideas here about quantum computing, information precision, and acceleration in the years to come. Let me know what you think about what all of these experts have said about the future of AI.
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Merck's (MRK) WINREVAIR Shows Strong Results in HYPERION Trial
Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) is one of the 12 stocks that will make you rich in 10 years. On June 23, the company shared encouraging results from its Phase 3 HYPERION trial. The study tested a drug called WINREVAIR (sotatercept-csrk) against a placebo, both combined with standard treatment, in adults recently diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH)—a serious lung condition. A lab technician in a biopharmaceutical laboratory, surrounded by technology and equipment necessary for advanced research. The trial involved around 320 people from different countries. Most participants were already on two background treatments, unlike earlier trials where most were on three. WINREVAIR showed it could significantly slow down the worsening of PAH compared to the placebo. However, the company didn't release the exact numbers yet, only saying the results were both statistically and medically meaningful. Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) is a global biopharmaceutical company. It discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, and animal health products. Its key products include Keytruda (cancer), Gardasil (HPV vaccine), Januvia (diabetes), and Bridion (anesthesia reversal). While we acknowledge the potential of MRK as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: and . Disclosure: None. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Gizmodo
an hour ago
- Gizmodo
Rubin Observatory's Stunning Result Proves It's a ‘Game Changer' for Spotting Dangerous Asteroids
Astronomers usually keep their eyes on the sky, but on Monday, June 23, the community turned its attention toward Washington, D.C., as scientists from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory unveiled the telescope's first images. Many have waited more than 20 years to see Rubin in action, and its initial findings did not disappoint. Rubin, a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, recently conducted its first 10 hours of test observations. In just that short period, the observatory produced dazzling images and discovered more than 2,000 previously unknown asteroids, including seven near-Earth asteroids. None of them pose a threat to our planet, but through this wealth of new data, the observatory has already proved to be a game changer for asteroid hunters working on planetary defense. By conducting unprecedentedly fast and detailed surveys of the entire southern sky, Rubin will allow scientists to find and track more space rocks than ever before. 'As this camera system was being designed, we all knew it was going to be breathtaking in what it delivered, but this has exceeded all our expectations,' Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and inventor of the Torino Scale—a tool for categorizing potential Earth impact events—told Gizmodo. Data on those 2,000 new asteroids went directly to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC), the globally recognized organization responsible for cataloging and disseminating data on asteroids, comets, and other small celestial bodies. It plays an essential role in the early detection and monitoring of asteroids that threaten Earth. The MPC has spent years preparing for the deluge of data from Rubin, ramping up its software to process massive amounts of observations. When the first round officially came flooding in on Monday, it was 'nerve-racking and exciting simultaneously,' Matthew Payne, MPC director, told Gizmodo. This was just a taste of what's to come. In a few months, Rubin will begin the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a decade-long, near-continuous survey of the southern sky. This will produce an ultrawide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the universe. In terms of asteroids, that means the MPC will receive about 250 million observations per year from LSST, according to Payne. 'For us, that's a game changer in the total amount of data that we're getting, because at the moment we get somewhere in the region of 50 to 60 million a year,' he said. Rubin's remarkable abilities stem from its remarkable instruments. Equipped with a unique three-mirror telescope design and the largest digital camera ever built, this observatory can conduct all-sky surveys while still detecting very faint objects like asteroids. This bridges a key gap between existing technologies, Payne explained. When hunting space rocks, 'you need to go as deep as possible,' Peter Veres, an MPC astrophysicist, told Gizmodo. 'That's what the LSST does, and none of the survey telescopes in the world that aim at planetary defense do that.' During this 10-year survey, Rubin will observe the cosmos on an automated schedule using its 27.6-foot (8.4-meter) Simonyi Survey telescope. Each 30-second exposure will cover an area about 45 times the size of the full Moon. Then, the enormous LSST camera will capture wide-field images and stitch them together to create a complete view of the southern sky every three nights. The combination of Rubin's huge field of view, short exposure time, and its ability to rapidly sweep the sky will yield an avalanche of asteroid discoveries, Veres explained. In 2005, Congress ordered NASA to build a near-Earth object (NEO) survey program to detect, track, catalogue, and characterize the physical characteristics of all near-Earth asteroids and comets at least 328 feet (100 meters) in diameter. If one of these objects struck our planet, it would cause mass destruction that would decimate life on a continental scale, Payne said. The goal was to find 90% of them by 2020, but current estimates show NASA has only found about 40%, he explained. LSST could help NASA pick up the pace. 'It's just going to start revolutionizing our understanding of this population of things,' Payne said. Binzel agrees. 'Those objects are out there, whether we see them or not,' he said. 'Now we're going to see them, and we'll be able to determine that most—if not all of them—are going to safely pass by the Earth in the coming decades. But the best news is if an object has our name on it already, we will be able to find it most likely many, many years—if not decades—before it would come toward Earth.' In theory, that would give NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDOC) time to launch a mission to intercept the asteroid. PDOC is still developing this capability, but in 2022, it launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which sent a spacecraft on a 10-month-long journey to collide with the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos. The collision successfully changed Dimorphos' orbital path, demonstrating NASA's ability to deflect a large asteroid away from Earth if given enough time. Given Rubin's clear potential to revolutionize planetary defense efforts—and the global attention it has received—one would expect NASA to be singing its praises. That has not been the case. The agency has kept strangely quiet about the observatory's launch—and in fact, it appears to be ignoring Rubin's first discoveries altogether. 'It's a warp drive version of finding asteroids,' Keith Cowing, an astrobiologist and former NASA employee who now serves as editor of NASA Watch, told Gizmodo. 'You'd think that the planetary defense people would be in the front row cheering it on, saying, 'send me the data!'' NASA did not share any public information about Monday's event and has not promoted the observatory's findings. When Gizmodo reached out for comment on Rubin's contributions to planetary science and defense, NASA declined and recommended reaching out to the observatory instead. On Tuesday, June 24, the agency's Office of the Inspector General published a report on the implementation and management of NASA's planetary defense strategy. The report only briefly mentions Rubin alongside NASA's forthcoming NEO Surveyor, a space telescope designed to find asteroids that could hit Earth. 'These new observatories are expected to find and track significantly more NEOs than current capabilities, which will likely mean a substantial increase in necessary follow-up observations,' the report states. NASA's PDCO and its planetary science program will undoubtedly use data gathered by the LSST, so what's with the cold shoulder? Cowing thinks it's a symptom of the agency's inner turmoil. 'They're jittery at NASA,' he said. 'Their budgets are being cut from all sides—they don't know what the final budget will be, but the White House wants to slash it—and they're having to react to this with whatever is at hand.' Indeed, President Donald Trump's 2026 budget proposal would cut NASA's science funding by a whopping 47%, potentially killing more than 40 missions, according to The Planetary Society. 'The only good news is what didn't get shot,' Cowing said. He suspects that most NASA employees—including planetary defense personnel—are in survival mode. 'What do you do when you simply don't know if you'll have a job, if the person next to you will have a job, or if you're gonna need to compete for the same job?' Cowing asked. 'That's what's at the heart of this. It's just this general malaise and fear, and people are simply not doing the routine, professional, collaborative, collegial work that they would do across agencies and countries.' As NASA science crumbles, it's unclear whether the agency will have the resources and personnel to take full advantage of Rubin's data. Though the PDCO currently leads the world's planetary defense efforts, that could soon change. Binzel, however, is optimistic. 'Great nations do great science,' he said. 'I continue to have faith that our nation will continue to do great science.
