Experts say the boom, heard and felt across the Lower Mainland Tuesday while the night sky lit up, was caused by a meteor.
British Columbians took to social media Tuesday evening to share reports of a bright fireball in the night sky over Vancouver, and a house-rattling sonic boom.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO 1130 NEWSRADIO VANCOUVER LIVE!Michael Unger, programs manager at the HR MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver, says all evidence suggests it was a bolide meteor event.
“A large rock that hit our atmosphere at a very high speed,” Unger explained.
“And because of the size and the speed, it created a sonic boom over the skies around 9:00 p.m. So this boom was heard through most of the Fraser Valley, even down into Washington [state], and created some bright flashes that were caught on camera.”
Unger says the meteorite, a rock from space, likely landed somewhere in the North Shore mountains.
Meteorites fall to Earth every day, and most pose no danger to its inhabitants. But Unger says it’s unusual for meteors to pass over metropolitan areas.
He says the last truly dangerous meteor event took place over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013.
“It’s not so much the impact when it hits the ground, it’s actually this sonic boom that actually causes a lot of the damage. In that case, the boom created a shock wave that blasted out some windows.”
Unger says the Space Centre has not heard any reports of damage from Tuesday night, and the meteor likely broke apart into a small rock before landing. He says it may take several days until astronomers can calculate the exact size of the meteor.
A statement from the UBC Department of Physics and Astronomy says initial evidence indicates it was approximately 10 centimetres, and landed tens of kilometres north of Coquitlam.
“If there are fragments that survived to the ground, finding them will be extremely difficult,” stated Prof. Brett Gladman.
The scientific community, Unger says, is making a push to implement systems to detect early warning signs of bolide meteor events and do what it can to mitigate damage.
“This is a reminder that we are on basically a spaceship going through space, and in our solar system, there are billions of these objects. Now most of them are small, but anything of size which could be a threat to the Earth is something that we need to be aware of.”
Unger encourages residents to stay curious and research events like Tuesday night’s.
—With files from The Canadian Press