| Aftenposten- news from Norway:
Residents of the Norwegian county of Nord-Troms were shaken when a meteorite struck the valley of Reisadalen last week. Experts are debating its impact, but they've found the site where it hit the ground.
An astronomer at the University of Oslo, Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard, told Aftenposten.no last week that he thought the meteorite that was photographed streaking through the sky could have had the same impact as the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima in 1945.
"Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare it to the (atomic) bomb," Røed Ødegaard said.
Truls Lynne Hansen of the Northern Lights Observatory (Nordlysobservatoriet) in Tromsø disputes Røed Ødegaard's description, calling it an exaggeration.
"Our atmosphere is peppered with small stones from outer space all the time," Hansen told newspaper Aftenposten. "Most burn up and disappear, but some land here."
He thinks that what hit northern Norway last week was a stone weighing around 12 kilos (about 26 pounds). "Out in space it generated enormous speed, but after entering our atmosphere its tempo eased," Hansen said. "This kind of meteorite isn't radioactive and it's not glowing when it hits the ground."
The meteorite, whatever its size, created a stir nonetheless. Norway's Defense Ministry tries to track all flying objects and be prepared via radar on land, at sea and in the air.
"We can observe such meteorites," said John Espen Lien of the northern military command in Bodø. "But everything happens so fast, and most of them disappear before they hit the ground."
This is where last week's meteorite is believed to have hit Norway, at Reisadalen, east of Tromsø:
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