The US Geological Survey confirmed that a meteorite had exploded in the sky near New Haven, Michigan, about 40 miles northeast of Detroit, on Tuesday night.

The USGS said the explosion caused enough force to register as a magnitude-2.0 earthquake.

Video posted on social media Tuesday night shows drivers witnessing a flying rock that emitted a bright light in the night sky before disintegrating. Some videos showed it appearing to head straight toward some vehicles driving on a freeway before it disappeared.

Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV reported receiving "hundreds of calls" from viewers around 8:15 p.m. local time to report the phenomenon.

Watch it unfold below:

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• A meteor swept across Michigan and parts of Canada. 
• It lit the sky blue before quickly burning up and disappearing in a flash. 
• Local residents claimed to have heard the explosion three minutes after the flash.
• The event occurred at 8pm local time.

A bright meteorbriefly swept across the sky over parts of the U.S. Midwest and Canada on Tuesday (January 16), weather and geology agencies said, and then caused a powerful explosion that rattled homes and onlookers.

The meteor was seen across the region in places such as Ohio, Michigan and Ontario at about 8 p.m. local time (0100GMT) and registered a 2.0 magnitude tremor about 4 miles (7 km) east of Saint Clair Shores in Eastern Michigan, the United States Geological Survey said on its website.

The National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed it was not a meteorological event but more likely a meteor.

The meteor sighting lit up social media with people posting videos and reaction.

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• On Thursday, "Fortnite: Battle Royale" players started seeing meteorites hitting the ground in the game. 
• These are the first reported impacts of the meteors making contact with players, after the game creators have been dropping hints that a major celestial event could change the game forever.
• Fans are freaking out as rumors swirl around the fate of the largest meteor in the sky, which many believe could take out the game's most popular area. 

"Fortnite: Battle Royale" players started seeing meteorites hitting the ground on Thursday, in the latest development of a series of in-game events that many believe are hinting toward an imminent, major change in the game.

The largest meteor, which was first spotted in the game last week, remains ever-present in the sky, and Tilted Towers — the popular game area where many people the meteor is destined to hit — is still standing.

However, if you log in to Fortnite right now, you'll have to add falling meteors to the list of dangers to avoid in the game. 

So far, a few players who have had close encounters with them have already shared photos and videos on social media, like this screenshot of a video posted to Reddit this morning:

Fan-blogs like Fortnite Insider have also been documenting the meteorites:

The meteorites, in combination with other Easter eggs rolled out by the creators of Fortnite this week, coincide with the fact that the game's third season will end next week, giving way to season four. Each season brings new weapons, and new cosmetic appearance items, to Fortnite Battle Royale. Many believe the creators at Epic Games are hinting that season 3 will end with a cosmic event.

In an effort to solve the meteor mystery, some hardcore fans have even opened up the game's code looking for clues, according to fan-blog Fortnite Intel, which reported that the latest update includes dozens of new meteor-related sound effects, some even labeled "Impact."

SEE ALSO: 7 reasons you should play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG, instead of Fortnite

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• The much-anticipated meteor shower kicking off season four of "Fortnite" has arrived.
• The meteor shower has reshaped the main island, altering some regions and (bizarrely) adding a few new ones.
• Season four's arrival was teased by a meteor that appeared in the sky above the game's island, driving players to speculate about what would happen.

It's finally here: The meteors have crashed in "Fortnite," launching the fourth season of the game and fundamentally reshaping the geography of its main island.

Where there was once no massive crater in the ground, there now is.

Moreover, the site of the meteor crashes has a new item scattered about that when consumed enables players to bounce around in low gravity. They're called hop rocks. Of course they are.

Here's a short video of the new items in action, courtesy of Kotaku: 

Most significantly, the main map of "Fortnite: Battle Royale" has changed pretty dramatically.

What was once Dusty Depot, a set of buildings smack in the center of the island, is now Dusty Divot, a crater. And where there previously was no drive-in movie theater area named Risky Reels, there now is (in the upper right corner of the map).

Of course, beyond the major geographical changes as a result of the meteors, there's a new season of "Fortnite"— the most popular game in the world, by some measures— for millions of players to dig into. People who buy the "battle pass" get a ton of new challenges that unlock a ton of new in-game stuff, from gliders to skins to emotes.

Check out the trailer for season four of "Fortnite":

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• An asteroid the size of the Statue of Liberty is set to pass within half a moon's distance of Earth on Tuesday evening.
• The asteroid, dubbed 2010 WC9, will come closer to our planet than any asteroid of its size has in 100 years.
• Luckily, this asteroid won't hit our planet or cause any damage. 

An asteroid the size of the Statue of Liberty is set to narrowly miss Earth on Tuesday evening. 

The asteroid, dubbed 2010 WC9, will come closer to our planet than any asteroid of its size has in the last 100 years. But don't worry: It will only reach 126,419 miles away from Earth around 6:05 p.m. ET on Tuesday, or about half the distance from here to the Moon.

While you won't be able to see it with your naked eye, scientists are actively monitoring the asteroid's path with radar and powerful telescopes. 

The asteroid was first identified in 2010, though it quickly vanished into space, Patrick Taylor, a scientist at the Universities Space Research Association at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, told Business Insider.

Here's a GIF of the actual asteroid, courtesy of Slooh:

The asteroid is estimated to be 200 to 400 feet across, according to NASA, making it the largest asteroid to come this close to Earth in hundreds of years. 

The asteroid was "rediscovered" in recent days, and "and found to be making a very close fly-by of Earth," Taylor said. 

"The case of 2010 WC9 goes to show that simply detecting a new asteroid is not enough to determine if it will be a future threat to Earth," Taylor added. 

Paul Chodas, the manager of The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Business Insider his team was "quite surprised" when astronomers spotted the asteroid again last week.

"The surprising thing was how close it will approach today, basically as close as it can ever get. But, again, we already knew that this asteroid could not collide with us," Chodas said. 

The asteroid's close fly-by towards Earth will give scientists a unique opportunity to get more data about the asteroid's physical properties, like size, spin rate, and composition, Chodas said.

Scientists are hard at work monitoring asteroids, or near-Earth Objects (NEOs), that may pose a threat to our planet, Business Insider's Dave Mosher reports. 

In 2013, a 65-foot wide asteroid smacked into Chelyabinsk, Russia, shattering windows and destructing structures in the surrounding area. 

Last year, an asteroid between 50 and 111 feet wide came within half a moon's distance of our planet. Another much larger asteroid, dubbed 2002 AJ129, came within 2.6 million miles of Earth in January. 

Fortunately, there's no real danger of WC9 hitting the Earth. Even if it did smack into our planet, it likely wouldn't spell the end of it — but it could cause some serious damage to the impact zone.

A 45-meter or 150-foot asteroid exploded over Tunguska, Russia in 1908 — in what is known as the Tunguska Event — and wiped out an area roughly the size of New York City. 

Statistically, Tunguska event-like asteroids strike Earth about once every 100 to 200 years.

This story was updated with new comments after publication. 

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• NASA and US government agencies have released plans for dealing with Near Earth Objects.
• The plan outlines options for deflection and disruption.
• A disruption plan raises the possibility of using nuclear weapons.

The US has an official strategy for dealing with Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that threaten the planet — and yes, it involves nukes.

You might know them as "asteroids", or "comets", but rocks and balls of ice and gas aren't the only objects that could potentially destroy a chunk of life on Earth.

There's more detail on what an NEO is in the 20-page report prepared for the White House to look at, along with things like "procedural actions", "international cooperation" and "computational tools".

But for now, let's cut straight to Goal 3 — "Develop Technologies for NEO Deflection and Disruption Missions".

There are really only two options — deflection and disruption.

"Multiple technologies may be suitable for preventing NEO impacts that are predicted well in advance," the report states.

"While disruption via nuclear explosive device may be the only feasible option for NEOs that are very large or come with short warning time."

Here are the technologies the White House is considering:

• Concepts for rapid response NEO reconnaissance missions. Including "mission concepts in which the reconnaissance spacecraft could also carry out deflection or disruption".
• International launch vehicle infrastructure to support planetary defense missions. Including "processes for accomplishing rapid response planetary defense space-lift".
• Identify technologies required to prevent NEO impacts. This is the one which includes "kinetic impactors, nuclear devices, and gravity tractors for deflection, and nuclear devices for disruption".

Let's stop there, at "kinetic impactors, nuclear devices and gravity tractors".

A kinetic impactor is simply smashing a spacecraft into the NEO in the hopes of deflecting it. A nuclear device is obviously your straightforward, "call Bruce Willis" case scenario.

The gravity tractor is something NASA is a couple of years away from testing. It performs a little bit like this:

Back in 2016, NASA announced its plan to target the 400-metre wide asteroid 2008 EV5 in 2021 with the gravity tractor technology.

Another important part of its mission, which the NEO white paper alludes to, is to grab a boulder off the surface of EV5:

Because if we're going to blow up asteroids, it's important to know exactly what it's made of.

Best of all, we might not have to wait for a Armageddon-sized asteroid to threaten us before we get to blow it up. The White House paper also makes sure to mention that test runs on harmless NEOs are essential to make sure this type of action will work.

It will, obviously, cost billions. 

But what are the chances of a decent ROI on all that spending and cooperation?

For one, the NEO white paper mentions that any asteroid exploration and material testing can be done in partnerships with private industry, because asteroids can potentially be worth trillions.

Fortunately for private industrialists, in 2015, US Congress passed the SPACE Act, giving US space firms the rights to own and sell natural resources they mine from bodies in space.

But NASA has often referred to the fact there is "no record in modern times of any person being killed by a meteorite" and that even an asteroid 1.5 kilometres across only hits the Earth every million or so years.

"In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years," it says.

Here are a couple of reasons why the need for an official response playbook has escalated in the past few years. For starters, this is the damage an object the size of the Tunguska object could inflict on New York:

The object that exploded over Tunguska and destroying 2,000 square kilometres of forest was 40-60 metres across.

The asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia with the power of 20-30 atomic bombs, damaging 7,200 buildings and injuring 1,500 people, was just 20 metres across.

Here's the rise in NEOs we've spotted larger than 140 metres since US Congress directed NASA to really start properly looking for them in 2005. We're up to 18,000 on just 3,500 since then:

NASA estimates there are over 10 million NEOs larger than the Chelyabinsk asteroid, and 300,000 objects larger than 40 metres, "that could pose an impact hazard and would be very challenging to detect more than a few days in advance".

The big ones — larger than one kilometre across — are those that have the potential to severely disrupt life on Earth as we know it.

The dinosaurs found out the hard way 65 million years ago when a 10-kilometre asteroid hit the Yucatan peninsula.

But NASA says it's found and catalogued almost all of those, and none are on a collision course with Earth.

NASA's NEOWISE survey, for example, has been tracking, and improved its ability to track, asteroids for four years now:

That's where the other half of the report is focused — on improving tracking methods, data processing and processes for identifying hazardous asteroids and the best way to deal with them.

Because while we are close to 100% certain that no extinction-level asteroids we've spotted are on a collision course with Earth, we're not 100% sure we've spotted all the extinction-level asteroids.

As the NEO report admits, there is some chance that "large comets from the outer solar system could appear and impact the Earth with warning times as short as a few months".

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The Perseid meteor shower is set to illuminate the night sky with hundreds of falling stars on early Friday morning. Experts are saying that this year's show will be especially stunning with up to 200 meteors per hour. Watch how and where you can see the best show possible.

If you can't get up on Friday morning to enjoy the show, then the online observatory Slooh will host a live broadcast of the meter shower at 8 p.m. ET. You can watch it here.

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The Perseids, the most-watched meteor shower of the year, is happening right now.

As our planet spins through the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet, tiny grain-of-rice-size bits of debris smack into our atmosphere and burn up, sizzling through the sky like shooting stars.

The meteor shower runs from July 17 until August 24 this year and will reach its peak in the evening hours of August 11.

And this year, a strange effect of the most massive planet in our solar system will make the Perseids twice as good.

"Forecasters are predicting a Perseid outburst this year with double normal rates on the night of Aug. 11-12," Bill Cooke, with NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office, said in a press release. "Under perfect conditions, rates could soar to 200 meteors per hour."

How to watch

Prime time for the Perseids will be during the shower's peak, August 11 and 12. The best time to head outside and catch some meteors is between midnight and dawn.

Unfortunately, some of the meteors will be drowned out by a waxing moon, which is when the moon is just a little greater than half full. But once the moon fully sets, at about 1 a.m., you'll be in the clear.

You won't need any telescopes or fancy equipment to see the meteors — just clear skies, your eyes, and a little bit of patience. Find a dark, remote spot away from the light pollution of nearby towns and cities, make yourself comfortable, and set aside a good chunk of time to enjoy the show.

Perseids meteors are bright and fast, and they often leave persistent trains, which is when the bright streak lingers in the sky. They are best seen from the northern hemisphere. The meteors travel at the mind-numbing speed of 132,000 miles per hour — 500 times faster than the fastest car in the world.

"Give yourself at least an hour of viewing time for watching any meteor shower,"EarthSky.org advises. "Meteors tend to come in spurts that are interspersed by lulls. Also, it can take as long as 20 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark."

If bad weather or bright lights are preventing you from catching any meteors, Slooh, an online observatory, will offer a live broadcast of the meteor shower from an observatory on the Canary Islands. The broadcast stream is below.

During the broadcast, professional astronomers will discuss the meteor shower and answer questions from the public.

What causes a meteor shower?

The orbits of comets are often a little lopsided.

When a comet swings too close to the sun, the sun's light boils its icy surface, releasing particles of ice and dust.

This debris follows the comet's path, forming a tail that points away from the sun. As Earth crosses the orbit of this comet, we pass through the tail.

The gravity of our planet attracts the dust and ice that the comet has left in its wake. When the debris is pulled into our atmosphere, it rubs up against air molecules, causing the debris to burn up and streak through the sky.

This results in glowing trails of light that we see as meteors, or "shooting stars."

The comet producing the meteors in the Perseids is Swift-Tuttle, which takes 133 years to make its trip around the sun.

Swift-Tuttle is a 16-mile-wide hunk of space rock that, traveling at 130,000 mph, takes 133 years to orbit the sun. It's the largest object in our solar system that makes repeated close approaches to Earth.

This year, Jupiter's monstrous gravitational pull will nudge particles from Swift-Tuttle about 930,000 miles closer to Earth, resulting in brighter, stronger meteors shooting across the sky. Instead of the usual 60 to 90 meteors per hour, this year's shower could produce as many as 200 per hour.

The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, but if you trace their paths back, they all appear to come from the same point: the radiant. That's because the meteors are all approaching us at the same angle. Meteor showers are all named after the radiant that the meteors can be traced to.

The radiant point for the Perseids is from the constellation Perseus the Hero.

Check out the livestream from Slooh on Thursday, August 11, at 8 p.m. EST:

SEE ALSO: 13 spectacular meteor showers that you won't want to miss

DON'T MISS: Stunning pictures from the Perseid meteor shower

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NOW WATCH: Here's a time-lapse of the Perseids — the most stunning meteor shower of the year

Early Friday morning, the annual Perseid meteor shower peaked.

It's already the most-watched annual meteor shower, but this year's is extra special. That's because Jupiter happens to be in the right place to nudge the comet that causes the shower closer to Earth.

The world took advantage of this unusual celestial occasion, staying up late or waking up early and sharing their best sightings on Twitter and Instagram. Here are some of the most incredible images we found of the night's light show.

If you're feeling inspired to try to catch some shooting stars, the meteor shower continues through August 24.

SEE ALSO: The most spectacular meteor shower of the year is going to be extra special tonight — here's how to watch

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The view from Zambia.

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Four billion years ago, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune battled for position within our solar system. But some scientists suspect that there was a fifth planet, similar in size to Neptune, that was also part of the battle.

Now, scientists think that a mysterious meteor could be evidence of that fifth Neptune-size planet.

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NASA tracks more than 10,000 Near Earth Objects (NEOs) in space. Millions of years ago, one of these NEOs hit Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs. No person has ever been killed by one in recorded human history. Using Purdue University's Impact Earth and data from NASA, we calculated the destruction different size asteroids would cause if they hit land.

Produced by Kevin Reilly. Animations by Rob Ludacer. Special thanks to Julia Calderone.

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Stargazers could wrap up their year with watching the Geminids meteor shower. While some may be able to spot a few shooting stars during the Ursids meteor shower, which is later in the year, Geminids meteor shower is the last chance to witness a whole lot of them before it turns 2017.

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Oceans cover 71% of the Earth's surface. If an asteroid were to strike us, it would probably land in the water. This award-winning animation from Los Alamos National Lab shows a detailed simulation of how it might happen.

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Flash...boom.

It took just seconds for a bright green fireball — and apparent meteor — to streak across the dark sky over Wisconsin at about 1:31 am Monday morning. But thanks to the magic (and paranoia) of our digital age, there's tons of security and dash-cam video of the event, and it's already all over the internet.

Here's a shot from Plover, Wisconsin, shared by the local National Weather Service (NWS) station on Twitter:

Here's the view from the University of Wisconsin campus:

Here's another shot from a car:

Here's the view from a police car:

NWS Milwaukee staff also shared a radar image showing what they believe is the meteor over Lake Michigan:

If any of the space-rock reached the surface, the lake is likely where it ended up. Though the flash looks low to the ground in some of those clips, that's a bit misleading; it was high enough to see from all the way in Illinois:

This video from the American Meteor Society shows its estimated path, and suggests it was visible from Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indian, Ohio, Indiana, New York, Ontario, Kentucky, Iowa and Minnesota:

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A future in which an asteroid crashes into Earth and destroys the planet — or all life on it, in the case of the dinosaurs — is prevalent in popular culture: Bruce Willis sacrificed himself to stop in happening in Armageddon, aliens have arrived on one in Day of the Triffids, and there have been a multitude of apocalyptic predictions on the news over the last few years.

So, what is the precise nature of asteroids, and how likely are they wipe us from the face of the planet?

Asteroids are rocky bodies orbiting the Sun, which differ from comets in that they are composed of metal and rock rather ice, dust, and rock. They were formed 4.5 billion years ago, but don't have sufficient gravity to round out like planets or have atmospheres.

Several asteroids have played pivotal roles in the world's formation and cosmic history. An asteroid the size of Mars, which has been retrospectively named Theia, hit the Earth and was partially absorbed: some debris from the impact, though, was conglomerated by gravity to form the Moon. The most famous asteroid, though, is Chicxulub — the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs by causing sufficient sulphur displacement to block out the Sun.

Small asteroids hit Earth frequently, but rarely have any effect — the most violent example in recent memory was the 17- to 20-meter diameter Chelyabinsk meteor which hit Russia in February 2013, smashing windows and injuring 1,400 people in the process. Asteroids with a one-kilometer diameter hit Earth every 500,000 years or so; with the last known example of one with a 10-kilometer diameter occurring 66 million years ago. The chances of an asteroid apocalypse, then, are minimal.

Peter Brown, professor of physics and astronomy at Western University in London, Ontario, said in an interview with CBC News:

There certainly is a risk from asteroid impacts; it's the only natural risk that we as a species have the ability to predict well in advance and mitigate against, entirely, […] But I want people to keep it in context. You shouldn't be losing sleep over it.

Our plan to avoid destruction

Despite the chances of an asteroid apocalypse being fortunately slim, our planet has measures in place to protect against smaller near Earth objects (NEOs) like the Chelyabinsk meteor.

The main agency responsible for tracking and putting contingency measures in place is NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which has a database sophisticated enough for us "to know within the next couple of decades for sure if any time over the next century if there's an asteroid that's going to hit," Brown said in the interview. The organization, according to its 2016 report, is also developing "Methods for NEO Deflection and Disruption."

NASA has already launched a progenitor for how a gravity-based asteroid diversion could work in the form of its Dawn Aircraft, which is currently orbiting the space rock Vesta.

A future version of Dawn could exert a subtle gravitational pull on a space object, which would allow it to change the trajectory of rocks with remarkable subtlety and specificity. 

Rusty Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation, who's mission is to protect the world from asteroid attacks, said in an interview with Space.com, "you can get a very precise change in the orbit for the final part of the deflection using a technology of this kind."

At the more futurist end of our planetary defense arsenal is the idea of "Mirror Bees." Hypothetically, we could send a swarm of robotic spacecraft bearing mirrorsto an asteroid, which would then focus the solar energy on one spot: Bill Nye, executive director of the Planetary Society, said to Space.com that "The reaction of that gas or material being ejected from the asteroid would nudge it off-course."

While the threat of a dinosaur-level disaster is extremely slim, even small asteroids can still cause huge amounts of damage, destruction, and pain. It's comforting that individuals and organizations are working towards developing methods to minimize the disruption asteroids — big or small — can cause.

SEE ALSO: Chinese scientists just teleported an object into Earth's orbit for the first time

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Get ready to see two of the most spectacular cosmic events of this year. This is how to watch the meteor shower and solar eclipse of August, 2017.

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• The Perseid meteor shower occurs each year in late summer.
• This year, the astronomical event peaks on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
• A bright moon will make seeing the meteors more challenging, but NASA says stargazers can expect to see one every couple of minutes.

Right now, Earth is plowing through a cloud of tiny bits of comet dust, turning the rice-grain-size debris into what many call shooting stars.

Known as the Perseid meteor shower, this recurring astronomical event is easily the most watched — and beautiful— shower every year.

The Perseids in 2017 is from July 13 until August 26, and it will peak in the late evening and early morning on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, according to EarthSky.org.

Some websites have claimed that there will be more visible meteors per minute this year than at any other time in nearly a century, but experts say this is hogwash.

"This year, we are expecting enhanced rates of about 150 per hour or so, but the increased number will be cancelled out by the bright moon, the light of which will wash out the fainter Perseids," Bill Cooke, who leads NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "A meteor every couple of minutes is good, and certainly worth going outside to look, but it is hardly the 'brightest shower in human history.'"

How to watch

This year's conditions will be challenging for two reasons.

First, there'll be a waning gibbous moon — the full moon will have just ended, but it will still be full and bright.

Second, the moon will rise in the evening and set near dawn. Normally the best time to watch for meteors is after the moon sets. TimeAndDate.com has a convenient moonrise and moonset tool to find out when that will happen in your location. In New York, for example, the moon will set at around 6:44 a.m. on Tuesday. In London, the moon will be visible most of the night.

Given this year's conditions, the best time to head outside is between midnight and dawn. The closer to dawn the better — though twilight begins to eat up the dark sky a couple of hours before the sun rises.

You won't need any telescopes or fancy equipment to see the meteors — just clear skies, your eyes, and a bit of patience. Find a dark, remote spot away from the light pollution of nearby towns and cities, make yourself comfortable, and set aside a good chunk of time to enjoy the show.

"Give yourself at least an hour of viewing time for watching any meteor shower,"EarthSky.org advises. "Meteors tend to come in spurts that are interspersed by lulls. Also, it can take as long as 20 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the dark."

Perseid meteors are bright and fast, and they often leave persistent trains, or the bright streaks that linger in the sky. They are best seen from the Northern Hemisphere, and they travel at the mind-numbing speed of 132,000 mph — 500 times as fast as the fastest car in the world.

What causes a meteor shower?

When a comet swings too close to the sun, the sun's light boils its icy surface, releasing particles of ice and dust.

This debris coming off the comet forms a tail that points away from the sun. As Earth crosses the orbit of this comet, it passes through the tail.

An interactive animation by Ian Webster at meteorshowers.org illustrates how this works:

The gravity of our planet attracts the dust and ice that the comet leaves in its wake. When that debris is pulled into our atmosphere, it rubs up against air molecules, causing it to burn up and streak through the sky.

That process results in the glowing trails of light that we see as meteors, or "shooting stars."

The comet producing the meteors in the Perseids is Swift-Tuttle, a 16-mile-wide hunk of space rock that takes 133 years to orbit the sun. It's the largest object in our solar system that makes repeated close approaches to Earth.

The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, but if you trace their paths back, they all appear to come from the same point, called the radiant. That's because the meteors are all approaching us at the same angle.

Meteor showers are all named after their radiant. The radiant for the Perseids is the constellation Perseus, the Greek mythological hero.

Ali Sundermier wrote a previous version of this story.

SEE ALSO: 18 stunning images of the Perseid meteor shower from around the world

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NOW WATCH: Here's a time-lapse of the Perseids — the most stunning meteor shower of the year

The US Geological Survey confirmed that a meteorite had exploded in the sky near New Haven, Michigan, about 40 miles northeast of Detroit, on Tuesday night.

The USGS said the explosion caused enough force to register as a magnitude-2.0 earthquake.

Video posted on social media Tuesday night shows drivers witnessing a flying rock that emitted a bright light in the night sky before disintegrating. Some videos showed it appearing to head straight toward some vehicles driving on a freeway before it disappeared.

Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV reported receiving "hundreds of calls" from viewers around 8:15 p.m. local time to report the phenomenon.

Watch it unfold below:

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• A meteor swept across Michigan and parts of Canada. 
• It lit the sky blue before quickly burning up and disappearing in a flash. 
• Local residents claimed to have heard the explosion three minutes after the flash.
• The event occurred at 8pm local time.

A bright meteorbriefly swept across the sky over parts of the U.S. Midwest and Canada on Tuesday (January 16), weather and geology agencies said, and then caused a powerful explosion that rattled homes and onlookers.

The meteor was seen across the region in places such as Ohio, Michigan and Ontario at about 8 p.m. local time (0100GMT) and registered a 2.0 magnitude tremor about 4 miles (7 km) east of Saint Clair Shores in Eastern Michigan, the United States Geological Survey said on its website.

The National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed it was not a meteorological event but more likely a meteor.

The meteor sighting lit up social media with people posting videos and reaction.

Produced by Jasper Pickering

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• On Thursday, "Fortnite: Battle Royale" players started seeing meteorites hitting the ground in the game. 
• These are the first reported impacts of the meteors making contact with players, after the game creators have been dropping hints that a major celestial event could change the game forever.
• Fans are freaking out as rumors swirl around the fate of the largest meteor in the sky, which many believe could take out the game's most popular area. 

"Fortnite: Battle Royale" players started seeing meteorites hitting the ground on Thursday, in the latest development of a series of in-game events that many believe are hinting toward an imminent, major change in the game.

The largest meteor, which was first spotted in the game last week, remains ever-present in the sky, and Tilted Towers — the popular game area where many people the meteor is destined to hit — is still standing.

However, if you log in to Fortnite right now, you'll have to add falling meteors to the list of dangers to avoid in the game. 

So far, a few players who have had close encounters with them have already shared photos and videos on social media, like this screenshot of a video posted to Reddit this morning:

Fan-blogs like Fortnite Insider have also been documenting the meteorites:

The meteorites, in combination with other Easter eggs rolled out by the creators of Fortnite this week, coincide with the fact that the game's third season will end next week, giving way to season four. Each season brings new weapons, and new cosmetic appearance items, to Fortnite Battle Royale. Many believe the creators at Epic Games are hinting that season 3 will end with a cosmic event.

In an effort to solve the meteor mystery, some hardcore fans have even opened up the game's code looking for clues, according to fan-blog Fortnite Intel, which reported that the latest update includes dozens of new meteor-related sound effects, some even labeled "Impact."

SEE ALSO: 7 reasons you should play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG, instead of Fortnite

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