YouTubeYay! Space is awesome!
Last week, NASA cameras captured an asteroid piece, approximated at 2 feet in diameter and weighing upwards of 100 pounds, as it entered Earth's atmosphere above the Georgia and Tennessee border.
The meteor burned so brightly that it outshined Venus (officially earning the label of a fireball) and the full moon. It moved at 56,000 miles per hour before breaking up above Ocoee, Tenn., and what didn't burn up on its way down may have landed in Cleveland, Tenn.
"This fireball was one of the brightest observed by the network in five years of operations," Bill Cooke, NASA's head of the Meteoroid Environment Office, explained (via Yahoo News). "The meteor was 20 times brighter than the full moon; shadows were cast on the ground as far south as Cartersville."
Cool, right? Watch the video below:
OMGNONONOOOO! Space is TERRIFYING!
While we got a first look at Sandra Bullock and George Clooney's Gravity earlier this year, the full trailer for the Alfonso Cuarón-directed deep-space thriller has officially debuted online.
And critics are already raving about the film, calling it "breath-catching" and "jaw-dropping."
The trailer starts with a foreboding warning: "At 372 miles above the Earth, there is nothing to carry sound. No air pressure. No oxygen. Life in space is impossible." Then, it launches into the terror/horror/chaos/nightmare/etc. of Sandy Bullock being tossed around space like a hot potato.
But then again, she'd probably have a nice view of the pretty meteor.