08 June 2016

BPEarthWatch - Arizona Fireball Shot Down! New Asteroid Tonight.



Well, dear readers, what do you want to call it? [earlier post on this site] ... this YouTube video presents some scientific astronomical knowledge but take a look at the image on the left with the curving tailings/tracking left in the sky after the impact. What are they?
Two different takes with one [BP EarthWatch] making informed and curious assertions and another [David Leibowitz, local reporter] dealing with how news = infotainment

Yet another report appeared in the East Valley Tribune
Posted: Tuesday, June 7, 2016 4:21 pm
" . . .This impulse to scan the internet made sense in the moment. I assumed what I had seen and felt was either a transformer explosion in our neighborhood or a military rocket out of the New Mexico desert breaking up in the sky over the Valley. Twitter seemed a likely source for some quick facts, a few paragraphs of explanation.
A couple of hours later, after scanning scores of tweets and Facebook posts devoted to meteor “entrails,” #Alien invasions and local TV news reporters begging witnesses to “send in pix/videos,” I was none the wiser, scientifically speaking. But I was reminded of everything I detest about the way stories travel in the 21st century.
Digitally and with criminal haste, laced with a high degree of stupidity and extreme narcissism . . .
The Great Arizona Meteor Sighting of 2016 — if that’s indeed what it was — put every facet of storytelling dysfunction on display, leaving social media and local news looking exactly like the rollover traffic accident that quickly replaced #AZMeteor as Thursday morning’s lead story. . .
Yes. Yes, I do know. It’s shocking to me that we’ve taken the incredible power to move massive amounts of information around the globe in a blip and reduced it to a circus in which everyone can make themselves a star. . .
Today, everyone is a “citizen journalist.” Everyone is an expert. Everyone feels compelled to co-create the news alongside the allegedly trained journalists who look more like carnival barkers with each passing year. Never has fact-gathering been less about facts and more about infotainment. The digital web that binds us together, that has the power to connect us all, once hailed as the height of technological innovation now mostly feels like just another television channel playing late-night infomercials and soft porn.
It would be fitting to no end if that explosion in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday was truly nothing more than some space junk. Fitting because of all the news junk and garbage that the rock from outer space left trailing in its wake.

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