Last night, around 7:45pm a loud boom was heard and felt over Tucson. It sounded like a sonic boom. The cause of the boom is subject to much speculation. The most probable cause was a sonic boom caused by a military aircraft, yet, so far, the military has denied responsibility according to a story in the Arizona Daily Star.

There is another possible explanation, though it might be far-fetched: a small asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over southern Arizona. KOLD News reports that someone claims to have seen “a lot of debris slow falling and shiny” on the east side of Tucson just after the boom.

Remember just two weeks ago, an asteroid exploded over Russia creating sonic booms and a shockwave. Maybe that asteroid had a small traveling companion.

UPDATE MARCH 1: The Arizona Daily Star reports that the Air Force said the boom was caused by an F-16 Fighting Falcon jet from Luke Air Force Base going supersonic “at a legal altitude” just northwest of Kitt Peak.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2013 at 8:03 am and is filed under General Science. Tags for this post: asteroid, meteor, sonic boom, Tucson boom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.