NASA Casts Doubt on Mysterious Nicaraguan 'Meteorite'

The explosion that shook the Nicaraguan capital city of Managua over the weekend was supposedly caused by a small meteorite, according to officials investigating the resulting crater. However, now experts from NASA are expressing their doubts, as civilians did not report seeing a streak or bright flash across the sky that night.

The explosion in question occurred last Sunday night and left a crater nearly 40 feet across, according to invesitgators in the city of Managua. The Nicaraguan capital city is home to about 1.2 million people, and a great number of them were reportedly calling emergency response services about a loud boom that literally rocked the ground just before the shouldering crater was discovered.

Nicaraguan authorities are telling international and local media that they believe a small meteorite broke away from the asteroid dubbed 2014 RC - a heavenly body about the size of a house that made a relatively close pass by Earth earlier Sunday morning.

However, not one person reported seeing a bright light or anything at all streak through the night sky.

"I was sitting on my porch and I saw nothing. Then all of a sudden I heard a large blast," Managua resident Jorge Santamaria told The New York Times. "We thought it was a bomb because we felt an expansive wave."

Now the Head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, Bill Cooke, is expressing his doubt that it was actually a meteorite at all that created the crater.

"The skies were partially clear, and an object capable of producing a crater this large would have also generated a very bright fireball (brighter than the Full Moon) that should have been seen over a wide area," he recently wrote in a NASA blog. "While a meteoritic origin for this crater cannot be ruled out with absolute certainty, the information available at this time suggests that some other cause is responsible for its creation."

NASA asteroid expert Don Yeomans added to Cooke's skepticism, telling BBC that the impact felt in Managua "was separated by 13 hours from the close Earth approach of [asteroid] 2014 RC, so the explosion and the asteroid are unrelated."

However, what could have caused the explosion then, remains a complete mystery.