In Rough Edges, Mike Rothschild writes about fringe groups, conspiracy theories and how the Internet broke our brains. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

Americans love when things explode. We love fireworks, action movies, and cannons shooting off. Americans also love weird science stuff we don’t really understand, like UFOs, the physics of airplane flight, and miracle cures. Combining these two interests can easily take an explainable event that’s got both loud booms and technical jargon and turn it into a conspiracy theory about what “they” are “really” doing in the skies over our heads.

Over the last week of May and into early June, Americans were puzzled by a series of loud explosions in the sky. They took place over western New York on May 27; Columbia, South Carolina on the 28; and Boston on the 30.  

Immediately after each one, confused residents took to social media to express their puzzlement and concern over hearing what appeared to be loud explosions during a time of international tension and a government that often looks like it’s on a war footing with its own people. Thousands of people over the three locations called 911, believing their city had been attacked or that their neighborhood had been hit by a falling airplane. Some thought it was an earthquake. A few even went outside expecting to see carnage all around them.

They did not, because two of the booms were just a coincidental occurrence of something that happens multiple times a year: a meteor hitting the atmosphere and disintegrating. The Boston boom was caused by a space rock about three feet wide traveling 75,000 miles per hour — roughly 100 times the speed of sound. When the meteor slowed down, it created pressure waves that mimicked the sound of an explosion. The meteor over Western New York was slower, but still around 56,000 miles per hour, fast enough to create a loud boom when it broke up.

But the boom heard in South Carolina was different from the other two. It left little photographic evidence, and no obvious signs of a meteor breakup. And when several things happen at the same time that don’t all have the same explanation, conspiracy theories follow. 

NASA didn’t report a meteor over the........

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