It’s Aug. 12, about 10 o’clock at night. I’m lying flat on my
back on the parking lot at Fremont Peak State Park. My spine
tingles with the day’s heat drifting up from the asphalt.
Suddenly, a collective exclamation of
”
Ahhhhh!
”
rises out of the darkness from other people laying on the ground
near me.
It’s Aug. 12, about 10 o’clock at night. I’m lying flat on my back on the parking lot at Fremont Peak State Park. My spine tingles with the day’s heat drifting up from the asphalt.
Suddenly, a collective exclamation of “Ahhhhh!” rises out of the darkness from other people laying on the ground near me. I, along with about 30 other folks, have just witnessed the appearance of an extraterrestrial visitor.
OK. Let’s back up a few hours so I can explain how I came to find myself in this unusual situation. Earlier that afternoon, I noticed an Internet article describing the Perseid meteor shower taking place that night. Astronomers predicted it would be an extraordinarily brilliant display of the streaks of light popularly called “shooting stars” or “falling stars.” The recommended place to see the celestial display was high in the mountains away from city illumination.
So, on an impulse, I drove to Fremont Peak which is about 11 miles up a curvy mountain road west of San Juan Bautista. And now, I found myself lying on my back, witnessing luminous lines burning the starry sky.
“Ahhhh,” about 30 people say in spontaneous unison as another streak of light silently crosses the sky.
Most meteors are nothing more than pieces of cosmic dust. Striking our world 60 miles high in the atmosphere at about 45 miles per hour, friction with air molecules cause them to heat up instantly and incinerate. This creates a short-lived effect that has amazed humanity for thousands of years.
All these people – including myself – came up to this mountain summit to go “Ahhh” over tiny bits of heaven kindled in Earth’s atmosphere.
What must people of ancient times have thought as they gazed at these fantastic streaks? Most certainly they’d have been convinced the source came from divine entities – not mere dust motes. After all, ancient people believed the perfect sphere of heaven was unreachable by mere mortals. Gods dwelt up there. So those streaks of light must surely be gods journeying down from the sky.
Perhaps, meteors might have helped bring rise in ancient cultures to the myth of falling angels. Could our present notions about wicked old Lucifer – whose name means “bearer of light” – have had its genesis in a chunk of hot rock slicing through the evening sky once upon a time?
A brilliant streak blazes briefly in the blackness. It appears to hit into the jagged crown of Fremont Peak. Everyone goes “Ahhhhh!”
Another piece of falling fluff – perhaps the debris of a comet – has just ended its cosmic existence for our amusement. Reality TV can’t beat this entertainment value.
About 40,000 tons of space dust rains on the Earth every year. Some scientists estimate it might be even more – in the millions of tons. If a chunk of rock makes it to the surface of the Earth, it’s called a “meteorite.”
As a kid, I remember on a family vacation visiting a large round hole in the desert near Winslow, Ariz. About 50,000 years ago, a huge chunk of rock from outer space sliced through the atmosphere and collided with our planet there. The impact dent is called “Meteor Crater,” but – I’m being nit-picky – it would be more accurate to call it “Meteorite Crater.”
The Bible gives a reference to a meteorite in the New Testament book of Acts. The apostle Paul observed that the people in the town of Ephesus (in what is now Turkey) worshiped a rock that “fell from heaven.”
Another possible meteorite played a pivotal role in the Islamic religion. Millions of Muslims go every year to Mecca, to make a hajj, or a pilgrimage, to the Kaba. This cube-like building stores a black rock once worshiped by pagans of Arabia. The story goes, the black rock fell from heaven to land at Adam’s feet. It was later rediscovered by the Biblical patriarch Abraham. The rock is about 10 inches by 12 inches in size. This meteorite is revered as a holy object.
“Ahhh!” I find myself exclaiming along with everyone else. A spectacular glow of light just streaked over us. Another bit of cosmic dust just “bit the dust.”
A very bright meteor is called a fireball. I’ve seen two of these. Once, when I was camping in British Columbia, I stepped out of my tent and looked up in time to see a greenish-bluish object flaring through the twilight sky. Pieces of it were breaking off. I swear, although I know it’s impossible, I could hear a faint sizzling sound coming from it.
I encountered my second fireball about four years ago. Walking along East Dunne Avenue in Morgan Hill in the late morning, I happened to look southward and saw a bluish light burning across the sky in the far distance. I read in the newspaper the next day a report of the exceptionally bright meteor.
Of course, meteors strike the Earth at all hours of the day. But the Sun’s glow is so overpowering, our human eyes can’t often see them in daylight.
Now for some alarming news. It’s very rare, but human beings have been struck by meteorites. About seven people in the last 200 years have been recorded killed after an unfortunate collision with one of these hot rocks.
In 1992, a small meteorite totally demolished a car near New York City. (I wonder if AAA covers this type of extraterrestrial target practice.)
Last year, a meteorite weighing 20 kg sliced through a two-story house in New Orleans. And in India, 20 people were injured when a shower of meteorites hit their homes.
But here on Fremont Peak on this night, I don’t worry about such calamities. Another light flashes silently through the night. And I find myself, with all the other skygazers, exclaiming “Ahhhhh!”
