Recent UK Fireball Could Not Have “Skipped” Around the World, New Analysis Says

The meteoroid seen over the UK on September 21, 2012 has created quite a sensation – make that a several sensations. First, the bright object(s) in the night sky were seen across a wide area by many people, and the brightness and duration – 40 to 60 seconds reported and videoed by some observers – had some experts wondering if the slow moving light-show might have been caused by space junk. But analysis by satellite tracker Marco Langbroek revealed this was likely an Aten asteroid, asteroid which have orbits that often cross the Earth’s orbit, but their average distance from the Sun is less than 1 AU, the distance from the Earth to the Sun.Atens are fairly unusual, making this a rather unique event. But then came another analysis that seemed to be so crazy, it might have been true: this meteoroid may have skipped like a stone in and out of Earth’s atmosphere, where it slowed enough to orbit the Earth until appearing as another meteor over Canada, just a few hours after it was seen over the UK and northern Europe. (...)Read the rest of Recent UK Fireball Could Not Have “Skipped” Around the World, New Analysis Says ...