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Mystery over fireball in Kerala sky remains unresolved

The mystery surrounding the fireball that streaked the sky across six districts in Kerala on the Friday night has not been fully unravelled yet. Though the preliminary conclusion of scientists in the state is that it was resulted from a meteor fall, there is also a view that it could be rocket or satellite debris.

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The mystery surrounding the fireball that streaked the sky across six districts in Kerala on the Friday night has not been fully unravelled yet. Though the preliminary conclusion of scientists in the state is that it was resulted from a meteor fall, there is also a view that it could be rocket or satellite debris.

Various agencies, including ISRO, Geological Survey of India and State Disaster Management Authority, have been working to find the origin of the fireball.

KP Praveen, a GSI scientist who has inspected a few sights where the local residents claimed to have seen falling the fireball from the sky along with State Disaster Management Authority chief Dr Sekhar L Kurikose and collected some charred splinters from Karumalloor near Kochi said that their preliminary assessment pointed to the possibility of a meteor.

"High specific gravity of the charred remains and presence of iron and nickel in them are the basic characteristic of a meteor, but we can reach a conclusion only after a battery of tests which will take at least a week or so to be completed,'' Praveen said.

He said that the bright streak which lit the cloudy night sky was due to the presence of the iron and nickel in meteor.

But scientists have no convincing answer on how it escaped from the highly powerful and modern space watching system of NASA and ISRO.

The huge fireball was sighted in costal district of Thiruvanthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Thrissur and Malappuram.

At Karumalloor, nearly four cents of land where the fireball hit the ground was fully charred. The local residents had to pump water to douse the fire resulted from it. At Kadampuzha in Malappuram, another spot where the fireball was said to have plunged, a small rubber plantation caught fire.

People at various places of these district claimed that they had sighted the fireball on Saturday night also.

Despite the official clarification that it was harmless usual phenomenon, people are a little scared.

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