Thousands Startled Following Meteor Explosion Over Southeast Michigan

On Tuesday night, a meteor flew over southeast Michigan causing the earth to shake, simulating an earthquake, leaving many citizens in shock. However, researchers say that meteor might not have actually caused a “textbook” earthquake.

“In fact, meteors do not cause earthquakes to rupture along a fault,” William Yeck, a research geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, told ABC News.

The real cause of the Tuesday night phenomenon was when the meteor, measuring at approximately two yards in diameter and traveling around 28,000 mph, exploded in the sky above the Michigan area.

“That explosion generated shock waves that traveled down to the ground northeast of Detroit, where residents heard a loud boom and felt the ground beneath them tremble,” Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, reported.

Although startling, this occurrence is not particularly dangerous, with not one reported death by a meteor in history.