Residents in the central province of Ontario reported seeing what looked like a meteor Sunday afternoon. A twitter user in Whitby caught the aftermath on her camera.
Photo Credit: Veronica/twitter

Flash across Ontario sky believed to be a meteor

Twitter was abuzz Sunday with reports and images of a bright object streaking through the sky in the province of Ontario, and experts suspect it was a meteor. The sightings were reported from points east of Toronto, on the shores of Lake Ontario.

Witnesses say the flash was brighter than a lightning bolt. One resident tweeted that her first thought was that there had been an earthquake or explosion because her house vibrated.

Reports ‘consistent’ with a meteor

Western University professor Peter Brown, an expert in meteors and comets, said the images and eyewitness accounts are consistent with a meteor. The American Meteor Society is investigating.

“The energy is somewhere in the order of a few tens of tons of TNT explosive equivalent,” said Brown. “That would translate into something on the order of half to one metre in diameter and that’s going to be a mass of…a few metric tons.”

There are scientists who think there are far more meteors headed for earth than we realize and they are raising money to send a telescope into space to try to detect them. They suggest dangerous ones could be deflected from their path toward earth.

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