This is a rare occurrence. A meteoroid traveling through space had enough of an arc to resist Earth's gravitational force long enough to simply skim through the mesosphere and return to space. When it exited the exosphere, the meteoroid had left approximately 80% of its mass in the atmosphere. NASA estimates that the chances of this happening are more than 1:10,000,000,000.
27/11/2013, 01:07
NASA theorizes that the debris originated from the GRB 080916C explosion on September 16, 2008. A GRB (Gamma Ray Burst) results from a supernova exploding or colliding with another. Normal GRB's last from 30 to 40 seconds and are visible with the naked eye. The GRB 080916C explosion lasted 23 minutes and put out more energy than the sun will in 7,000 times its natural life cycle. After the massive explosion, second only to the Big Bang, 500,000 Cubic Miles of heavy metals were released by the dying supernova, some traveling nearly Three-Fourths the Speed of Light.
