The Police in Devon and Cornwall in the UK are investigating a mysterious bright object spotted falling across the night sky over the south coast. Two 'fireballs' sparked several 999 calls, with witnesses suspecting there could have been a plane crash.
After carrying out search operation in the area, the police said they were “satisfied” it was not a plane but more likely to be an asteroid. The search started after an officer from Plymouth Police tweeted on Sunday morning: “Did anybody else see two glowing objects falling southwesterly direction out towards Plymouth sound?
“I know I have been up all night, but that was odd. Asteroid?”
Another officer responded to the tweet with a picture they had managed to take of the mysterious glow at 5.52am.
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The Force Incident Manager for Devon and Cornwall Police then said aerial searches were being carried out in the area.
Experts told Sun Online that it was an asteroid breaking up after penetrating Earth's atmosphere. The fireballs were spotted across the South Coast of England, London and Wales.
Paul Michael Murphy , 42, a company director from West End, in Hampshire, was walking his dog when he witnessed what he was convinced was a meteorite which hit earth nearby from where he spotted the fireball.
“I have never seen one that low. It was very close — it looked like it was going over the rooftops, Sun Online quoted him as saying.
“It lit up the sky and was quite sizeable, about the size of a football. It was like a big lump of burning magnesium. It was literally coming down within walking distance,” he added.
The Force Incident Manager for Devon and Cornwall Police then said aerial searches were being carried out in the area.
He said: “We have had further reports of seeing an object in the sky from some distance away with a trajectory towards the ground, with an item falling off it at some point.
“There have been reports it broke into two and this has come from numerous people... We’ve got two aircraft in the air looking and doing aerial searches of the area. At the moment we are saying it is the Yelverton/Tavistock/Prince Town area.”
Meanwhile, an expert has warned that the asteroid named as Apophis also known as ‘God of Chaos’, which has 65,000 times the power of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, has a bigger chance of hitting Earth than you have of dying in an aviation disaster. Yes, you read it right.
According to a report of express.co.uk, the Apophis God of Chaos asteroid is named after the Ancient Egyptian god of evil, darkness and destruction. According to the scientists, the asteroid would leave a crater more than a mile wide and a 518 metres deep. The 370m-wide space rock is potentially on a collision course with Earth. It is worth mentioning here that NASA is also unable to rule out the collision.