Mysterious surge of giant fireballs across US sparks extraterrestrial origin theories: ‘Warrants serious investigation’
Earth has seen a mysterious surge in massive fireballs lighting up the sky, sparking concerns about a potentially city-killing asteroid striking the planet and questions about these objects being UFOs.
The American Meteor Society (AMS), a nonprofit group that has been tracking meteor sightings for over a century, revealed that there have been more reports of fireballs in the first three months of 2026 than in the first quarter of any year dating back to 2011.
The society said: ‘The first quarter of 2026 has produced what appears to be a significant surge in large fireball events. The data, drawn from the AMS database going back to 2011, shows a pattern that warrants serious investigation.’
AMS also noted that the recent uptick of space rocks ripping through the atmosphere cannot be definitively explained by local meteor showers or other natural events in space, with 2,046 fireballs already tracked since the start of 2026.
That included 38 major events worldwide reported by more than 50 people, more than the last two years combined.
As many witnesses have suspected that the sightings include extraterrestrial ships visiting Earth, researchers addressed the possibility that the fireballs could be UFOs or some type of artificial craft.
AMS said that the fireballs were not objects of alien origin, adding that their analysis found there has simply been a strange increase in the number of natural meteors flying across Earth’s path recently.
‘These are rocks from the inner solar system. There is no evidence of anomalous trajectory behavior, controlled flight, or non-natural composition,’ the team claimed.
On March 17, witnesses in Pittsburgh reported seeing what appeared to be a burning object streaking through the sky, describing it as ‘a rocket or something like a meteor’
There have been more widely witnessed meteor fireballs around the globe in the first three months of 2026 than at any point since records started being kept by AMS in 2011
These bright streaks of light, created when space rocks burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, can be potentially dangerous if a large enough piece reaches the ground and strikes people or homes, but this is considered an extremely rare event.
Recent reported fireballs include widespread sightings over the US, in Pennsylvania and Ohio, Texas and California, and in other countries such as Australia and Turkey.
March 2026 has stood out the most, as there were far more events seen by over 50 and 100 people, fireballs lasting longer than four seconds and meteors producing loud ‘sonic booms’ – when a meteor shoots through the atmosphere at speeds over 25,000 mph.
For example, one fireball over Germany on March 8 was reported by 3,229 people. Several other widely visible events had hundreds of witnesses each this month.
Overall, nearly a thousand more fireballs have been spotted in this year’s first three months than were detected a decade ago, when only 1,175 were seen in 2016.
However, skeptics have challenged the society’s analysis that these are all natural phenomena taking place during a random uptick in space traffic streaking past the planet.
Most notably, one fireball over Texas on March 17 has been widely theorized to be a genuine UFO, after it was seen defying the normal trajectory of a shooting star.
Witnesses across Red Oak captured the shocking moments when an orange fireball streaking through the night sky suddenly turned back up into the air instead of crashing to Earth.
Hundreds of people across the western US reported seeing a mysterious green flash ripple across the sky on March 22
‘Not your typical burn-up trajectory. UFO or space rock? You decide,’ one person posted online after seeing the strange fireball turning and zig-zagging over Texas.
AMS has pushed back on the claims that anything besides harmless asteroid fragments has entered Earth’s atmosphere this year, saying that every piece of a meteorite recovered has been a common rock seen falling from space for years.
‘The recovered specimens from Ohio and Germany are achondritic HEDs with mineral compositions formed over billions of years on differentiated asteroids,’ researchers revealed in a statement.
Achondritic HEDs refer to a special group of meteorites. Achondritic means these are stony meteorites without small round grains, called chondrules, that most common meteorites have. They formed from melted and cooled rock, like volcanic rocks on Earth.
HED stands for Howardite–Eucrite–Diogenite. These are three closely related types of achondrites that all came from the same large asteroid, Vesta, which sits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The meteor society added that there was no current threat from this surge in meteorite impacts. There was also no risk of a massive space rock colliding with the planet and devastating humanity.
‘The objects involved range from pebble-sized to a few [feet] across and are part of the normal continuum of material that Earth encounters. None posed a danger beyond localized effects.’
However, AMS did acknowledge that one of these impacts severely damaged the roof of a woman’s home in Houston on March 21.
The meteorite that landed in Sherrie James’s home just outside Houston on March 21
Over the last decades, the first quarter of 2026 has seen the most fireballs worldwide, suggesting that more meteors are passing Earth than ever before
NASA said the three-foot-long rock that weighed over a ton prior to colliding with Sherrie James’s house was traveling at 35,000 mph before most of it burned up in the atmosphere.
A tiny chunk of the meteor survived and struck the woman’s home with such force that it ripped through the ceiling of her daughter’s bedroom, ricocheted off the floor, and hit the ceiling again before landing on an empty bed.
AMS said part of the reason for the massive surge in fireballs being reported to them by the public could be because of AI chatbots.
In 2025, there were only 15 fireballs witnessed by more than 50 people in the first three months of the year. There have already been 38 in 2026
When people see a bright fireball, witnesses often ask ChatGPT, Siri, Grok or Google’s AI ‘I just saw a fireball – where do I report it?’ and the AI directs them straight to the AMS website.
This can cause each big event to get more reports than it would have in the past. However, the report noted that AI likely only explains the higher number of witnesses per event, not the actual increase in loud sonic booms or the meteorites striking Earth.
The last time there were more than 2,000 fireballs seen in Earth’s atmosphere before the start of April was 2021.
