Meteor Scares Hoosiers

By Margaret Lyons in News on Apr 17, 2008 4:28PM

Police suspect a meteor caused loud noises, bright lights and a faint metallic smell in parts of Indiana last night. Residents near Kokomo say they heard an explosion, and some say they saw a fireball. Over 100 people called 911 to report the incident, which some identified as a plane crash, but despite 60 law enforcement officers and around 200 civilians searching the area, no debris turned up.

Bill Burton, 52, an electrician from Komoko, was cruising the Internet from his home Wednesday night when he said he heard a boom and raced outside. What Burton said he saw was four distinct fragments of white light that each turned red and were stacked together like four period punctuation marks. The phenomenon lasted only a few seconds.

An astronomy prof told the Indianapolis Star that this particular piece of space rock could have been as small as a baseball or as big as car.

On a not really related note, the upcoming X-Files movie finally has a title: The X-Files: I Want To Believe. Yesssss. [AP, WTHR, WLFI, Trib, Indianpolis Star, infographic via NASA]