JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Meteors strike the planet every day...they are the small ones about the size of a Grape-Nut. A meteor shower is simply several samller meteors passing through the earths upper atmosphere.
Eye catching fireballs in the sky like the Detroit meteor are rarer but happen five to 10 times a year. Larger impacts have resulted in fires and damage but most of these strikes happen in uninhabited areas.
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NASA's Bill Cooke, at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, estimated the Detroit meteor was no bigger than 1 to 2 yards in diameter.
It entered the atmosphere at 28,000 mph which is when the friction heated up the rock creating the fireball in the sky.
This heating reduces the majority of meteoroids down to something the size of a few soda cans or smaller fragments.
Seismographs detected the energy equal to a 2.0 earthquake as compressed air shocked the planet.
A meteor hitting the ground is called a meteorite and only very large and extremely rare meteorites reach the Earth with enough energy to produce explosive craters. When they do they are usually over 110 pounds.
Only 5 reports in Florida have turned up meteorites in the state. With the majority in the center of the country.