In the mid-1990s a popular trope of escapist fiction was the 'disaster movie' whereby the end of the world was envisaged to be brought about by some catastrophic natural occurrence. Films like Armageddon starring the world's most marketable bald man, Bruce Willis, and Deep Impact envisaged an approaching asteroid bringing about some mass extinction event. Since then however, due to various environmental and political factors, we no longer need to externalise and wilfully conjure up some hypothetical scenario that might bring about the end of the world as we seem to be perfectly on track to do that ourselves.
However, that's not to say that there aren't still large pieces of debris in space threatening to hurtle down into our atmosphere at a moment's notice. To make the situation worse, Bruce Willis seems as if he's entirely reneged on his duties to keep a vigilant eye on the skies and is instead ploughing ahead with his acting career.
All of that is to say that a meteor was spotted in the skies over Ireland last night. One Sean Linehan, while driving through Cork, spotted a bright green light flash across the sky, which was recorded on a dashcam.
@CorkSafetyAlert @rtenews @Corks96FM Just caught this on my dashcam outside Banteer, Cork. Bright meteor/fireball flashing across the sky. Footage doesn't do it justice, very cool. #greatballsoffire pic.twitter.com/87ey9nvuhH
— Sean linehan (@LinehanSean) October 28, 2019
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While some people were skeptical of the footage and suggested that it might have simply been caused by a firework, Astronomy Ireland confirmed that it was too big to be a firework and was therefore a meteor or fireball. Sightings of the meteor were reported across large parts of the country and even apparently in Wales.
It wasn’t a firework folks, despite the week that’s in it! ? ? They don’t make them that big yet. Sounds like a meteor or a fireball. Thanks for the reports and keep them coming.
— Astronomy Ireland (@AstronomyIRL) October 28, 2019
