bolide

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Dr. Gary Senn, director of the Dupont Planetarium in the Ruth Patrick Science Education Center at USC Aiken, says it was a large meteor, technically called a bolide.

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Examples (50)

  • Within five, 10 million years of the bolide impact we had a whole variety of animals going into the water. —  Paul Sereno digs up dinosaurs
  • A couple of times the meteors ended their flight in a bright explosion known as a bolide. —  F ;SF; - vol 101 issue 01 - July 2001
  • A bolide, an exploding meteor with fiery fragments shooting off in half a dozen directions—Mark knew that if he were outside the dome, he'd probably have been able to hear it. —  Asimov'sSF,October-November2007
  • A TLMG, or Transient Localized Mud Geyser, begins with an uncommonly solid surface (bolide-glazed porcelain earth, usually) trapping a small (the radius of a typical TLMG is on the order of fifty meters) bubble of superheated mud beneath it. —  Asimov'sSF,February2008
  • The bolide is found to be exceptionally dark, lending evidence that this could be a short-term comet with most of its volatiles bled away. —  Asimov's SF, July 2007
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French, from Latin bolis, bolid-, kind of meteor, from Greek, missile, flash (of lightning), from ballein, to throw; see gwelə- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Latin bolis (bolid-), a fiery meteor, from Greek βολίς (βολιδ-), a missile, dart, from βάλλειν, throw.
 

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/ˈboʊlɪd/
by American Heritage

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