Social media flooded with videos of a dramatic fireball over Spain and Portugal – IGN

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The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Planetary Defense Office is investigating the appearance of a giant fireball that lit up the skies over Spain and Portugal late last week. At 22:46 UTC on May 18, the fiery body was observed racing across the night sky at a speed of about 45 kilometers per second before disappearing in a bright flash of light at an altitude of 60 km over the Atlantic Ocean.

It was originally thought that the fireball marked the destruction of a small meteor that came into contact with Earth’s atmosphere. However, ESA later announced that the interloper was likely a fragment of a larger icy comet that had broken away from the main body and wandered through the solar system for an undetermined amount of time before setting off on a fateful collision course with our Blue Marble .

Footage of its explosive destruction was released on social media by observers in Spain and Portugal, along with a recording from ESA’s fireball camera in Cáceres, Spain.

As it entered the atmosphere, the comet fragment’s enormous speed would have compressed the atmospheric gases in its path – a process that in turn would have slowed the object while heating it at the same time. Its descent would continue until the unequal pressure on the front and back of the fragment overwhelmed its tensile strength, causing the ancient traveler to disintegrate in a catastrophic fireball.

ESA’s Planetary Defense Office is currently analyzing data on the fragment to determine its size and trajectory and whether any part of the cosmic wanderer may have survived to land in the Atlantic Ocean. Researchers are also working to determine whether the object – which was not actively tracked before hitting Earth’s atmosphere – can be found in telescope data leading up to the event.

Sunday’s unexpected event is the latest in a series of spectacular cosmic events that have graced Earth’s skies in 2024. They began on April 8 with a dramatic total solar eclipse that swept across part of North America, casting the country in lunar shadow. This display of orbital mechanics was followed by a period of intense solar activity earlier this month, which triggered a series of spectacular auroras on Earth that lit up the night sky over the northern United States.

Astronomers have also predicted that the distant white dwarf T Coronae Borealis will explode later this year in a massive nova explosion that will make it visible from Earth for the first time since 1946. You can find more science news here. Find out more about the discovery See an ancient waterway that connected 31 ancient Egyptian pyramids, or read about how a piece of the International Space Station crashed through the roof of a Florida family’s home earlier this year.

Image credit: ESA/PDO/AMS82 – AllSky7 Fireball Network
Anthony is a freelance writer who covers science and video game news for IGN. He has over eight years of experience reporting on groundbreaking developments in various scientific fields and has absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

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