Scientists Finally Figured Out the Mystery Fireball over Alberta, Canada

A mystery fireball that made impact in Alberta, Canada, in February 2022 was either thought to be a meteoroid, that could be any debris from a comet or asteroid. Currently, scientists have found that the meteor that night was a space rock instead of an icy comet.

2021 Alberta Fireball

Just before dawn on the 22^nd of February 2022, a bright meteor lighted up the Alberta night sky, wherein the fireball was reportedly seen by multiple people from Edmonton to Red Deer. The witnesses told they hard a loud boom and saw a glow in the sky, according to Canada's Global News.

A video report provided by the Canadian news agency indicates the loud fireball shook windows but there were no reported casualties. At that time, the Canadian media, experts, and scientists attribute the meteor to be a comet or a meteoroid.

Comet or Meteoroid?

Any space rocks that enter the Earth's atmosphere turns into a fireball, also known as a meteor. However, the space object itself could either be a comet, asteroid, or something else. In the case of the 2021 Alberta fireball, scientists have postulated the glowing object that night was likely a meteoroid, which are rocky or metallic space objects smaller than asteroids.

Data collected by the scientific team suggest the object was made of rock instead of ice and it behaved more like an asteroid, according to the journal Science. The team calculated that the space rock had been approximately on a 1,000-year orbit around the Sun before it struck Earth, which led to the theory it came from an extremely far region of the Solar System known as the Oort Cloud.

Oort Cloud

The Oort Cloud was populated by so-called planetesimals, small objects that can accumulate enough to form into planets. They are gravitationally scattered by our solar system's giant planets, particularly Jupiter and Saturn, when the system was still forming, according to Karen Meech, an astronomer from the University of Hawaii - Institute for Astronomy, who told Newsweek.

Meech adds it was long thought that the Oort cloud was populated by comets since the colossal planets formed in the solar system's region perceived to be cold and contains a lot of icy material. Now, the discovered existence of rocky meteoroids in the Oort Cloud could reportedly change our view on how it came to be, Newsweek reports.

The Oort Cloud is considered to be the most distant section of the solar system. The region is like a large, thick-walled bubble made of icy materials of space debris with a size as large as mountains and sometimes even bigger. It could also contain billions or trillions of space objects, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

NASA adds it is also believed to be a "giant spherical shell" surrounding the rest of the solar system, way beyond the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt and the orbit of Pluto.

Our knowledge of the Oort Cloud is substantial, yet no object, except for approaching long-period comets, has been directly observed within it, leaving the cloudy region a theoretical concept for now, the US space agency explains.