Last week, a meteor explosion took place over Izmir, Turkey, that caused the whole sky to change its colour. The local residents were absolutely taken aback, and according to the report, the sky turned an eerie shade of green for few moments.
Some of the social media users posted footage of what they referred to as a “meteor” heading towards the ground, which caused an explosion above and temporarily changed the sky’s color. Here’s a compilation of videos showing the fascinating event:
Apparently, the incident gained much attention on Twitter, with netizens sharing footage of the green-colored night sky. In addition, there were also posts speculating conspiracy theories about aliens vessels and advanced orbital weaponry. However, a Turkish astrophysicist, Dr. Hasan Ali Dal soon toned down the thrill and excitement by saying that meteors tend to heat up when they approach the earth’s atmosphere.
“In reality, the explosion was likely a typical meteor that strayed too close to the Earth and managed to survive longer and reach closer to Earth than the average space rock,” Dr. Hasan Ali Dal explained on Twitter.
He added that these sorts of dramatic explosions usually happen during this time of the year as part of the ‘Perseid Meteor Shower’, which occurs every year between July and August. Up to 50 meteors shoot through the sky in an hour at over 1,00,000 mph. Mostly its traces do not even reach the earth.
As far as the bizarre green-coloured sky is concerned, it was due to nickel content in the space rock. However, it is also speculated that the colour could have resulted from atmospheric conditions or camera artifacts showing the same mysterious green shade in all photos captured.
This has determined that fortunately or unfortunately, the green ball fire had nothing to do with Aliens, nor was it a secret experiment being conducted by SpaceX for a weapon. But this will for sure not take away the charm for the laymen looking at fireworks, from a safe distance indeed.