Concord Ledger

What was thought to be a seismic event or an unconfirmed earthquake took place in southern and central New Hampshire, startling its citizens, according to WMUR9.

This event took place on Sunday morning, Oct. 10, at 11:24 a.m., according to Volcano Discovery.

“New England mystified by loud boom: Explosion? Earthquake? Meteor? Mystery boom and unexplained rumblings freak out people in New Hampshire,” read an Oct. 12 tweet from a Twitter user named Tusk@ 426.

The epicenter was detected 22 miles west of Hillsborough County, though it reverberated through all of New England, according to Volcano Discovery. The magnitude of the event is currently estimated at 3.8.

However, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, there were no earthquakes reported in New England that day. The Federal Aviation Administration also confirmed that military planes flying over New Hampshire were not the source of the loud boom and shaking. Scientists say the most likely explanation is a meteor, according to reporting by WMUR9.

"The Earth is always passing through this sort of dust of sporadic meteoroids," Ryan Volz, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told WMUR9. "And mostly, they're very small, dust-sized particles, and they're creating meteor events that no one notices except scientists who try and look for them. But sometimes you get these bigger meteoroids, and they create something that everybody notices."