back to article Alien space rocks EXPLODE in fireball over Japan

Japanese star-gazers have been all a-buzz this week after a fireball lit up the night sky before crashing to earth in Saitama prefecture, a little north-west of Tokyo. News of the fireball started to flood Twitter in the early hours of last Sunday morning, 20 January, according to RocketNews24. The entertainment site has …

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  1. WonkoTheSane
    FAIL

    Video Fail

    Due to "crossdomain policy restrictions".

    Did Reg mean this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQxmhSJXfQ

    1. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Video Fail

      Thanks for the correct link, that's pretty awesome. Hope life is good outside the asylum.

    2. LarsG
      Meh

      Unidentified North Korean rocket fail.

      1. Tom 7

        Unidentified North Korean rocket fail????

        not if they can get their rockets up to 20km/s!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Video Fail

      It worked for me, save that Flash kept asking permission to store local data on my machine - permission that was repeatedly refused. I wish the morons at Youtube (and the BBC, to take a momentary tangent) would realize that if I've said no, I am unlikely to have changed my mind five seconds later.

  2. Katie Saucey
    Alien

    We're damn lucky!

    SG1 stopped Anubis again, (or maybe those pesky replicaters) .

    1. wowfood
      Devil

      Re: We're damn lucky!

      pfft, Clearly that was the Z fighters saving the earth once again. And no doubt that bastard Mr Satan is going to hog the credit.

    2. PaulR79
      Thumb Up

      Re: We're damn lucky!

      Ahh you have just won my heart! SG1 remains my favourite series and RDA a hero to me. Incidentally it was his birthday in the past few days.

    3. Christoph

      Re: We're damn lucky!

      No, it was obviously Fireball XL5

      1. Euripides Pants

        Re: Fireball XL5

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bAChAtdTBc

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thanks

    Reminds me I have a Godzilla film to download.

  4. Bad Beaver
    Thumb Up

    Impressive

    Many years ago I saw one of those while taking a walk at night. It's quite the impressive experience.

    1. Matthew Anderson

      Re: Impressive

      Same - I seen once in the north of Scotland some 2 decades ago and my mother and I jumped out of our skins.

  5. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Alien

    It begins!

    Mazinger Z to the rescue!

  6. dfgraham
    Mushroom

    Doesn't Do It Justice

    I happened to be driving on a dark country road one night a few years back facing in exactly the right direction when one of these fell about 200 km away along the Alberta, Saskatchewan boarder. It was pitch black. Try to imagine it turning from night, to full day light in about 3 seconds. It was literally like the scene were they turn on the sun in "The Trueman Show". My first though was is that what an ICBM going off looks like? My second though was to pull over, call someone, and make sure I wasn't going crazy. Pretty damned amazing sight.

    1. TRT Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Doesn't Do It Justice

      Yeah. I saw one low on the horizon near Southport, Lancashire/Merseyside back in... ooh... must be 1980. Due to that there optical illusion, it looked massive and it certainly lit up the sky for a moment.

    2. Grease Monkey Silver badge

      Re: Doesn't Do It Justice

      "Try to imagine it turning from night, to full day light in about 3 seconds."

      Hardly. This object had an apparent magnitude of -11, that's not as bright as a full moon. Or to put it another way, something like a couple of million times less bright than the sun.

      Not daylight then.

    3. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: Doesn't Do It Justice

      I remember a decade ago, heading south toward Philadelphia. Just north of the city, a green fireball headed west to east for quite a bit longer than this one did. Same flaring, fragments coming off, to finally flare over New Jersey. Considering the angle, even money any sizable remnants ended up in the Atlantic Ocean.

      Shortly after getting over the "wow! factor, I picked up my cell and called it in; "Zed, we have a bug."

  7. FartingHippo
    Alien

    Alien Space Rocks

    I think we should petition NASA and ESA to change their standard vocabulary:

    "asteroid" to "alien space rock"

    "meteorite" to "flaming alien space rock"

    "fireball" to "flaming alien space rock of DOOM"

  8. WeaselNo7
    Boffin

    *dons pendant hat*

    But surely -11 is less than -4... does that mean it's NOT a fireball? or is that hyphen indicative of something other than negativity? Nnnnnnnng.

    1. Helena Handcart
      Boffin

      Re: *dons pendant hat*

      Nope. An astronomical magnitude of 0 is (well, was) based on the star Vega, anything fainter than that is positive, anything brighter is negative on a logarithmic scale.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: *dons pendant hat*

        So they were smoking weed or something on the night they decided that was logical!?

        "Huh doods, lets define an increase in brightness as a negative, and a decrease in brightness as a positive, that'll confuse them."

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Were the Mayans just a few weeks out?

    No.

  10. jungle_jim
    Alert

    Trail of green mist?

    did it have one?

  11. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Fireballs

    Seem to be more common than is suspected.

    I saw one in full daylight about 30 years ago. It was larger than a full moon and trailing flames - clearly audible (apparently this is some kind of widely reported phenomenon with large fireballs which makes stuff on the ground make noise) and went from horizon to horizon in about 3 seconds - too fast even for a supersonic jet and there was no sonic boom anyway.

  12. Dilbert42
    Thumb Up

    viral promo?

    Cloverfield 2.

    1. kyza

      Re: viral promo?

      Pacific Rim:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vKz7WnU83E

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That was nothing. I mean, literally nothing. I've experienced three in my lifetime, and actually saw two. The two I saw lit up the night like it was a bright sunny day. One was so bright it was like a nuclear explosion. That was before cell phones, internet, surveillance cams, etc..

    We had one a few years ago that was so close that it made the ground shake, it registered as a small earthquake.

  14. Tank boy
    Childcatcher

    Those poor people

    First Godzilla now this?

  15. tony2heads
    Alien

    'Crashed' into the sea

    That's what the Atlanteans want you to think

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