Are the Amount of Meteorite Strikes Increasing? I have to wonder if anyone else has noticed all the meteors which have come streaking out of the sky lately? I don’t have a count but I know I have been reading about a lot of different ones coming to earth lately. Sometimes some of them are said to be UFOs by some people but in order to be sure they would have to change course during their descent because meteors do not change course. In February of 2016 a meteor was said to have crashed near Madison, Wisconsin in the United States. The strange part of this is the meteor changed course during the last minute before it hit. Some UFO investigators reasoned it could not have been a meteor, I should say meteorite. It changed at the last minute so it could not have been a meteorite. Could it have been a UFO? Others are not sure and still believe it was a meteorite. One of the most famous meteorites which came into the earth’s atmosphere was the one which came to earth on 30 June 1908 and exploded in an airburst over Tunguska in Siberia, Russia. It flattened 770 square miles of forest. The event has been debated for years and there are still those who believe it was a UFO which exploded. I have heard all sorts of stories about this. If a UFO was in trouble and could not make it out of earths atmosphere the next best thing for it to do if the pilot cared about life on earth would have been to fly the UFO to the most remote spot he could get to, to avoid carnage. That spot could easily have been Tunguska so those who believe it was a UFO might also believe the pilot was doing a very brave thing and knew it would be the end of him. Others believe it was just an overheated meteorite and blew up above the forest. Lately meteorite strikes have been in the news a lot and there has been an ongoing discussion about when the big one which can wipe out the earth will hit. There is one thing which doesn’t seem to be mentioned very often and seems to be forgotten and that is the earth’s population is increasing and this means more land is going to be occupied every year thus make even a smaller meteorite hit potentially deadly. This means we not only have to protect ourselves from big hits but also smaller ones. I think we are missing the point only taking steps to stop those bigger meteorites from doing damage. There is also another problem, what if one heading this way breaks up into hundreds of smaller pieces, how do we stop that? If we examine the amount of meteorite hits between 1994 and 2013 we see there were at least several hundred of them. They were of varying sizes. Surprisingly certain areas seem to have more than others. Does this mean there was really less hits in others or did more hits take place unnoticed? South American seems to have had the least of the continents except for Australia not counting the poles because there is no accurate count for them. The Pacific Ocean has had an enormous amount of hits, but it is the biggest ocean on earth. On June 18, 2018 a green meteorite burned up over Europe. It was said the object fell to earth at 9:09 PM in the Netherlands. It had been seen by many Europeans as it streaked along in the sky. It was reported in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland among other countries. A meteoroid smashed into the side of a crater on Mars on 15 June 2018. The impact caused a landslide. On Friday 8 June 2018 an asteroid was seen traveling over Botswana, Africa. It was burning as it traveled. I have seen video of some of these which not only burn but look like something is dripping off of them as they travel. The authorities didn’t think this was a problem since the object was only 6 feet in diameter. The truth is a meteor this size is estimated to hit with the force of ten tons of TNT, which is still enough to cause damage and death. For the sake of this article asteroid, meteor, meteorite are all being used interchangeably according to the news sources. On June 3, 2018 another asteroid was seen traveling over South Africa but it disintegrated. Another meteor was over Botswana on 2 June 2018 and hit the ground after becoming a fireball. In 2016 NASA issued a report which was said to show the amount of meteor fireballs are increasing. This raises an interesting question and it is why? In one year from 2014 to 2015 they increased 20%. Before that from 2013 to 2014 they had increase an incredible 120%. Every year since 2005 to 2015 the number of fireballs has increased and the difference between the amount in 2005 compared to the amount in 2015 is staggering. In 2005 there were almost 500 fireballs that year, the amount had jumped to 9,300 by 2015. There has to be a reason for this. This makes me wonder if the big difference is junk falling from orbit? It does seem like a bit of a stretch for this much stuff to make it low enough since most space junk is small. So, while there could be a modest increase because of space junk there must be another reason. Even the expected meteor showers that come along every year such as the Perseids have shown increased fireball activity. Does this mean more meteorites are heading our way? It certainly seems that way. We have to remember we are moving in space and as we move into different areas there could be more debris such as the debris trails of comets. There is another thing which could be happening and it is something heading our way which is disturbing our solar system. These two events could even be happening at the same time. There has often been talk of a ninth planet which is bigger than earth existing in the Oort cloud. Some icy bodies are said to exist there and there are those who believe the legendary ninth planet heads this way every 20,000 years or less and as it orbits nearer to us it causes a lot of disruption in the solar system and thus more meteors head this way. This idea goes back to ancient times. There could be more reasons for this activity which we are not aware of. Space has a lot of secrets and we are just learning more about them. Some other unknown process might be involved such as an undetected black hole or even something else. Maybe this is a cycle and it will taper off some time in the future and it happens every so often. There is one thing for sure there are more meteorites headed our way and let’s hope none of them are monsters.
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