A deluge of fireballs

Just while I am on the subject of space, we here on Earth seem to be experiencing an extraordinary, indeed unprecedented, number of fiery meteors ("fireballs").

There are meteor strikes happening all the time, some of them even making it though burning up in the atmosphere to land as meteorites. There are also predictable meteor showers like the Perseids that happen every year, caused by the Earth's path through the tail of a specific comet. But this is different.

It is different partly because of the size of the rocks that are hitting and burning up in the upper atmosphere. In terms of visibility, most fireball events draw a few witnesses; in March 2026 there were at least five that drew over 200 eyewitness reports. One on March 8th over Europe had 3,229 reports from the public. There have been more sightings in one month than in the previous 15 Marches combined. Many also punch deep enough into our atmosphere to cause sonic booms, rattling windows and scaring pets. One crashed through the roof of a residential building in Texas and ricocheted around the bedroom. A house in Ohio had a similar experience, as did a house in the German town of Koblenz-Güls.

This is not the prelude to an alien invasion, though. Mapping of the trajectories of these meteors shows that they are emanating from a region called the Anthelion Sporadic Source, a diffuse region of the Solar System where there are lots of asteroids and meteoroids under the influence of Jupiter and other gravitational forces. Meteors from this region are usually quite few and scattered, making this current spate something of an anomaly (and regular viewers of Star Trek know what an "anomaly" usually portends!) The heliocentric origin of the meteors, though, means that we can rule out an incursion from other galaxies. At least for now.