A loud bang rocked Northern Melbourne last night and left residents wondering: what the fuck just happened?
The late-night explosion was accompanied by a flash of light, rattling the neighbourhood just before 9pm.
The culprit? Most likely space junk or a meteor, astrophysicist Clare Kenyon told the Herald Sun.
“When a piece of space junk – or even something natural like a chunk of space rock – is pulled towards Earth, it’s moving really quickly and then basically slams into the atmosphere, creating a kind of sonic boom,” she said.
“The friction from Earth’s atmosphere is immense and causes the material to break apart and burn causing lingering bright streaks of light across the sky.”
Residents reported hearing a massive explosion and seeing a bright flash of light. Police and ambulance crews also confirmed they responded to reports of a “loud bang”.
That “loud bang” indicates that whatever it was broke up relatively close to the ground, probably within a few kilometres.
“This is relatively uncommon and is probably a result of the large amount of material that re-entered, taking time to fragment and burn up as it raced down to Earth,” Kenyon said.
Melbourne has already been rocked several times this year by space debris. Earlier this month, a “loud bang” rattled a neighbourhood and in August, a Russian rocket lit up the night sky as it fell back to earth.
