
(Credit: AFP / MARIANA SUAREZ / Illustration)
BEIRUT — On Friday night, local media outlets and social media users shared a video of a "meteor/meteorite falling in the plain of Talia in the Bekaa."
In the video, an asteroid heading towards Earth lights up the sky heavily making a strong glow before disappearing completely.
A claim that has been quickly denied, by local sources quoted by our correspondent in the Bekaa Governate, where no such incident was reported, and by reverse searching the video circulating.
This process showed that the video was actually taken on Wednesday when an asteroid burned up over the Philippines.
What happened in the Philippines?
According to the NASA, a "roughly 1-meter (3-foot) asteroid burned up in Earth’s atmosphere over the Philippines near Luzon Island." Such asteroids hit Earth about every two weeks, according to the space agency, but they are "very rarely spotted before making impact with the planet."
According to the European Space Agency, the 2024 RW1 asteroid, as it's been designated, is just the "ninth asteroid that humankind has ever spotted before impact."
"The object is harmless, but people in the area may see a spectacular fireball", the ESA added before the incident.
It remains unclear, how, two days later, the same video was used to spread fake news about a meteor lightening up the Bekaa's sky.
Differences between asteroid, meteorite, meteor
President of the UniversCiel association and former national astronomy education coordinator of the International Astronomical Union organization, Jean-Pierre Saghbini, told L'Orient Today that a meteor is a piece of asteroid or comet that enters the atmosphere of the Earth and then burns and melts in the air, which means that it does not touch the ground.
Meteors seen from Lebanon are very common, with one to five large ones observed every year. In January 2020, one of these big meteors was filmed by some people while driving in Sannine, Mount Lebanon.
On the other hand, a meteorite is a piece of asteroid or comet that touches the ground. Both meteors and meteorites are called asteroids before they enter the Earth's atmosphere.
Lebanese humor
Despite being common, a meteor did not light up the Bekaa's sky on Friday night; the whole fuss was based on fake news.
And later that night, many X users reacted to the Bekaa rumor, before knowing that it was inaccurate. Some people even started making jokes about the incident referring to Lebanon's continuous crises and incidents.
"We are still missing dinosaurs, [if this happens], we would seal all the disasters", an X user, Zein, posted on Friday night.