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Experts are still trying to unravel a mystery. Late yesterday afternoon, a number of people, across the city, reported seeing bright lights in the sky and also hearing loud noises. Witnesses say they saw a fireball fall onto the city.
It looks like any of the other areas of waste-ground that dot this city. But as this home video shows, last night, something struck this city. But you wouldn't know today.
Today, as the fire brigade and police investigators look over the land, everything appears to be normal.
One of the amazing things is that one day later, this ground looks practically untouched. You have to search very close for damage, this is a burn mark caused by the debris.
Regardless of what hit this ground, this is a night that those who live here won't forget. But still, some aren't surprised.
I talked to some folks at "Sky & Telescope" magazine who are saying that they are a little skeptical that there was actually a touchdown, because there was no evidence on the ground of anything. But they tracked, from eyewitness reports, where it was spotted, and it was spotted, coming in, they think, from the south, and moved north, where it was spotted and people heard a noise, and that's where they say it probably entered the atmosphere, whatever this object was.
But they wonder if pieces of debris may have fallen from the object. Maybe that's what caused it. Whether the whole object fell -- they are a little skeptical.
We haven't heard anything from the UK space ministry, and they're the ones who are responsible for tracking this sort of thing. It could have fallen from the sky. But we heard nothing from them, and they have made no reports that it was a piece of space junk. Some scientists are wondering if it was a rogue rock, they call it -- an asteroid which would consist of metallic rock material -- or whether it's a piece of a comet, which would be more of an icy material. They don't know because there really is nothing to study; there's no evidence of an actual thing falling to earth.
Because it was, basically, eyewitness accounts, and I don't think they really can tell by the size. People were saying it was the size of a refrigerator flying, but no, there is nothing that they can ascertain, and they really can't specify what it was. Right now, it's a mystery.
As we are out there this morning, you really can't tell that anything fell. There's really no debris, no dust, and there's not a lot of the damage to the grass. The only damage you could see are small, microscopic burn marks that are in the leaves. You can tell that those are burn marks because of the black rings around it. Those burn marks were not there yesterday.
We've got evidence of burn, but we can't find any object -- no residue, no rim of a rock -- nothing, That is the mystery, and that's the mystery a number of scientists from some local colleges are going to be examining today. They're taking it seriously. They are not considering it to be a hoax, but I suppose anything is possible.
© Alfred McGuffin 2006
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