Up in the sky … it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman.

No, it’s a bolide.

Wait, what?

“Oh, wait what” is the phrase nominated as the dumbest new phrase used in the English language.

By whom? We don’t know, but some dim-witted keyboard warrior said so on the internet, so it must be true.

What is a bolide though?

That is a meteor.

Not just any meteor but a very bright one such as the one that scientists have decided blew up over Pittsburgh on New Year’s Day 2022.

Problem is no one saw it even though it was apparently very bright.

Many people reported hearing the explosion as far away as Ohio and West Virginia, but it wasn’t anymore noticeable to the eye than one more Baker Mayfield incompletion.

But NASA has released some extremely interesting facts about bolides and their opinion about this one.

NASA is speculating that this local bolide (which we hope they will name in honor of Big Ben’s farewell performance) was at least 1 meter in diameter (that is about 3 feet across or just out of gimme range for one of our golf partners, White Chocolate’s, putts), weighed 1,000 pounds and was traveling at 45,000 miles per hour (slightly more than Najee Harris running past Brown’s defenders on the final drive Monday night), and it packed an explosion equal to 30 tons of TNT or the equivalent of all the gas caused by western Pennsylvanians consuming sauerkraut for New Year’s celebrations.

It produced a large boom, houses shook, and plumbing rattled according to news reports, but it was unclear if any of that was in fact due to the sauerkraut.

The good news is there were no reports of damage or injuries and yet we learned a new word, some scientific facts and we don’t have to smell or discuss sauerkraut for another year.

Happy New Year and may God bless everyone working in our court systems.

— RV