Everything we know about the huge asteroid that exploded outside London

Anyone who happened to be up at 3am last night and looking up at the night sky might well have witnessed an exceptionally strange (and totally dazzling) sight indeed. An asteroid crashed into the earth and exploded mid-air, with the results being visible in areas of south England, Wales and northern France.

Asteroids, for those not in the know, are huge chunks of rock that orbit the sun. They’re essentially mini-planets – and they vary in size a lot. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 60-odd-million years ago was more than six miles in diameter. This one, by contrast, was just under a metre in diameter and so burned up entirely before it could hit the ground.

When we say this asteroid crashed ‘outside London’, we mean well outside. The asteroid, which has been given the catchy name of Sar2667, was initially predicted to fall near the French cities of Rouen and Le Havre but ended up nearer to the English Channel, a few kilometres off the coast of northern France.  

Impressively, the European Space Agency actually managed to predict pretty well when and where the asteroid would hit the earth’s atmosphere. It’s only the seventh time anyone has accurately predicted this sort of thing – and it led to lots of people capturing the sight on social media. Here are a few vids and shots of Sar2667.

Isn’t this all kinda the plot of ‘War of the Worlds’, you ask? Well, sort of. It’s also just one of rather a few spooky goings-on around the world at the mo, from sightings of UFOs and ‘octagonal flying objects’ to mysterious explosions. Weird, eh?  

Did you see that an intergalactic new ‘Star Wars’ exhibition is opening in London?

Plus: London is getting these futuristic electric ‘tram buses’.