Kasargod, March 03, 2015: The strange appearnce recently of a ’fireball’ that streaked the sky across six districts inKerala on the Friday night has not been unravelled yet. Though the preliminary conclusion of scientists in the state is that it may be the result of a meteor fall, there is also a view that it could be rocket or satellite debris.
Various agencies, including ISRO, Geological Survey of India and StateDisaster Management Authority, have been working to find the origin of the fireball. A GSI scientist who has inspected a few sights where the local residents claimed to have seen the fireball falling from the sky along with State Disaster Management Authority chief and collected some charred splinters from Karumalloor near Kochi said that their preliminary assessment pointed to the possibility of a meteor. "High specific gravity of the charred remains and presence of iron and nickel in them are the basic characteristic of a meteor, but we can reach a conclusion only after a battery of tests which will take at least a week or so to be completed,’’ a scientist said. The bright streak which lit the cloudy night sky was due to the presence of the iron and nickel in meteor. But scientists have no convincing answer on how it escaped from the highly powerful and modern space monitoring system of NASA and ISRO.
The huge fireball was sighted in costal district of Thiruvanthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Thrissur and Malappuram. At Karumalloor, nearly four cents of land where the fireball hit the ground was found charred. The local residents had to pump water to douse the fire it caused. At Kadampuzha in Malappuram, another spot where the fireball was said to have plunged, a small rubber plantation caught fire.
People at various places of these district claimed that they had sighted the fireball on February 28 night as well. Despite the official clarification that it was harmless usual phenomenon, people are seen to be in panic.