A meteor exploded over the city of Pittsburgh on New Year’s Day (Getty)
Residents of Pittsburgh in the United States got an explosive start to the new year when a meteor blew up overhead.
According to Nasa, the detonation of the meteor was the equivalent to 30 tonnes of TNT.
For context, the biggest bomb detonated in the UK since the end of the Second World War was a terrorist attack in Manchester in 1996 that injured 200 people and caused millions of pounds’ worth of damage.
That bomb was around 16 tonnes of TNT.
Earlier in London in 1917, 50 tonnes of TNT exploded at a factory making munitions for World War One.
Known as the Silvertown explosion, it’s the largest explosion ever recorded in the UK.
It was so severe it was heard as far away as Sandringham in Norfolk, and along the Sussex coast, while the windows of The Savoy Hotel were blown out.
London’s biggest ever explosion took place in 1917 when 50 tonnes of TNT exploded, killing 73 people (Getty)
Nasa estimated the meteor was travelling about 45,000 miles per hour when it exploded at around 11.20am Eastern Time on New Year’s Day.
Plenty of residents telephoned the emergency services to report the blast and officials were able to reassure them that no damage or injury had occurred.
The first inklings of the event were from the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, which posted on Twitter saying its satellite had registered a flash that was most liklely the result of a meteor explosion.
Nasa’s Meteor Watch then confirmed the blast in a Facebook post.
And a huge boom can clearly be heard in social media footage shared online at the time.
Nasa reported the fireball would have been clearly visibile in daylight if it hadn’t been a cloudy day. The space experts noted it would have been 100 times brighter than a full moon.
Data from Nasa showed the explosion from the meteor was the equivalent to 30 tonnes of TNT being detonated (Nasa)
‘If we make a reasonable assumption as to the meteor’s speed (45,000mph, or 72,400km/h), we can ballpark the object’s size at about a yard in diameter, with a mass close to half a tonne,’ the agency said.
A meteor exploded over the city of Pittsburgh on New Year’s Day (Getty)
Residents of Pittsburgh in the United States got an explosive start to the new year when a meteor blew up overhead.
According to Nasa, the detonation of the meteor was the equivalent to 30 tonnes of TNT.
For context, the biggest bomb detonated in the UK since the end of the Second World War was a terrorist attack in Manchester in 1996 that injured 200 people and caused millions of pounds’ worth of damage.
That bomb was around 16 tonnes of TNT.
Earlier in London in 1917, 50 tonnes of TNT exploded at a factory making munitions for World War One.
Known as the Silvertown explosion, it’s the largest explosion ever recorded in the UK.
It was so severe it was heard as far away as Sandringham in Norfolk, and along the Sussex coast, while the windows of The Savoy Hotel were blown out.
London’s biggest ever explosion took place in 1917 when 50 tonnes of TNT exploded, killing 73 people (Getty)
Nasa estimated the meteor was travelling about 45,000 miles per hour when it exploded at around 11.20am Eastern Time on New Year’s Day.
Plenty of residents telephoned the emergency services to report the blast and officials were able to reassure them that no damage or injury had occurred.
The first inklings of the event were from the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, which posted on Twitter saying its satellite had registered a flash that was most liklely the result of a meteor explosion.
Nasa’s Meteor Watch then confirmed the blast in a Facebook post.
And a huge boom can clearly be heard in social media footage shared online at the time.
Nasa reported the fireball would have been clearly visibile in daylight if it hadn’t been a cloudy day. The space experts noted it would have been 100 times brighter than a full moon.
Data from Nasa showed the explosion from the meteor was the equivalent to 30 tonnes of TNT being detonated (Nasa)
‘If we make a reasonable assumption as to the meteor’s speed (45,000mph, or 72,400km/h), we can ballpark the object’s size at about a yard in diameter, with a mass close to half a tonne,’ the agency said.
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