Video of meteorite hitting Maryland? Flash in East Coast sky has social media buzzing

The streaking ball of fire Friday night above the East Coast did not, for now at least, signal the end to civilization as we know it.

Though you might get that sense from social media.

The sky lit up along the U.S. eastern seaboard with reports of "a thin streak of blue-greenish-white" from people like Chip Guy, who was driving in eastern Maryland when he and his family he spotted it.



But his tune changed once he posted something about the presumed meteor on a local social media webpage, which triggered a quick and hearty response.




So what exactly was it?



A meteoroid that gets through the atmosphere and hits the Earth is a meteorite. And then there are asteroids, which JPL describes as "a relatively small, inactive, rocky body orbiting the sun" often in what are called asteroid belts.

As anyone who has seen a shooting star can attest, such otherworldly objects do enter the Earth's atmosphere. And some of them do strike the Earth, though they tend to be small when they do and strike unpopulated areas on land or plunge into the world's oceans.






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