Around 2:10 p.m., a loud bang was heard across Cambridge and Somerville with police scanners in Somerville picking up Somerville Police Department chatter at 2:16 p.m. about several reports of a possible explosion. Other reports and online posts suggest the bang was heard throughout much of Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Read more Two movies on rules rewritten & rules broken

Cambridge Police sent out a Citywide Alert at 3:11 p.m. reporting that the department was aware of the ‘loud boom,’ and noting that it had been reported by several Cambridge residents and across the region.  

Police Spokesman Sergeant Robert Reardon told Cambridge Day police had received “a number of calls from concerned community members.”

Reardon said the cause of the noise was unknown, but there were no “known incidents or resulting hazards in Cambridge that are connected.”

Read more Yiyun Li on life ‘in the abyss,’ writing and the importance of ‘Moby Dick’

WBZ-TV Chief Meteorologist Eric Fisher said in a post on Instagram that the bang was caused by a meteor which “exploded off the South Shore.” He pointed to lightning satellite data which signaled a large release of energy slightly off the coast at the time of the bang, a phenomenon which usually corresponds with meteors entering the atmosphere and exploding. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-19 Geostationary Lightning Mapper Satellite showed a concentrated burst of lightning flashes off the coast and over much of Cape Cod at 2:11 p.m.

Somerville’s police department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more CPS names new school leaders and administrators