Recently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) warned that the Earth is likely to be hit by a major asteroid strike and we are not fully prepared for it. On Monday night, Queensland, Australia received what seems to be warning in the form of a meteor.
According to Brisbane Times, the police confirmed that they received several reports about hearing a bang and seeing a flash in the sky near Gladstone, about 400 kilometers north of Brisbane. Reports claimed that "whatever it was, it was big," but fortunately no damage was reported.
Geosciences Australia reported that there were measurements of a 3.8 magnitude earthquake registered in Airlie Beach a couple of hours after the influx of reports. More people called and let authorities know that they felt a slight tremor around that time, which only served to strengthen the speculation that a meteor hit Coral Sea, Gladstone.
"It's not a comet, or Queensland wouldn't exist anymore," said Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, as reported by the Gladstone Observer. "It is probably a large meteor. I'm guessing a rock about a meter across which would have been big enough perhaps to leave fragments (meteorites) on the ground."
McDowell further theorizes that based on the reports, the meteor is quite possibly a big one that no one has seen in several years.
Private astronomer Owen Bennedick says that there are two things that can explain the incident that Queensland witnessed. One, a space rock, not necessarily an asteroid or a meteor, hit the earth and caused minor tremors. Two, the space rock may have exploded in the sky due to the contrasting temperatures of hurling down at high speed and the natural cold of something that's coming from space. The explosion caused a shockwave and that could be what the Gladstone residents saw.
Regardless of what could explain Queensland's alleged meteor, it looks like NASA was not far off the prediction of a disturbance, or a disaster, caused by something in outer space.
Watch: Meteor Hits Australian Coast
