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	Large Meteor May Have Struck Australia By SPACE.com Staff posted: 08:28 am ET 06 September 2002

Headline: Large Meteor May Have Struck Australia

Residents of southern Australia reported a large fireball in the sky Thursday night and inundated local law enforcement offices with phone calls, according to local media reports.

An astronomer said the cause was likely a boulder-sized space rock crashing through Earth's atmosphere and possibly hitting the planet's surface.

One witness described a whooshing sound. "It came straight over the top and left a huge smoke trail and there was two huge sonic booms afterwards," the person told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC).

Bryan Boyle from the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales told ABC the object probably zoomed down to at least 30 kilometers (19 miles) above the surface. According to the Reuters news service, residents of Goolwa and Victor Harbor, south of the state capital Adelaide, inundated police with reports of a flash of blue light, smoke trails and two sonic booms.

"It does sound like there could well have been an impact like that on the ground," Boyle told ABC.

Small meteors routinely enter Earth's atmosphere and burn up, creating "shooting stars." Large objects, from basketball-size to the dimensions of a small car, enter less frequently and typically burn up or break apart before reaching the surface.

Asteroids the size of a bus or bigger can generate truly impressive explosions like the one apparently witnessed yesterday. These objects, depending on their composition, sometimes survive to the surface. Or they can break apart and some of their pieces fall to the ground as meteorites.

Scientists hunt for meteorites and use them to learn more about asteroids and the solar system.

There are no firm records of any human deaths by space rocks in recent decades, but astronomers warn that the threat is real and that eventually an asteroid will strike and cause local or regional damage and possibly deaths.

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