- #1
- 22,185
- 6,854
A New Jersey family said they are thankful everyone is safe after an apparent meteorite crashed through their roof on Monday afternoon.
According to a statement released by the Hopewell Police Department, a "metallic object believed to be a meteorite" struck the roof of a ranch-style home. The oblong object, which police described as being about four inches by six inches, went through the roof and ceiling of the home before it "impacted the hardwood floor" and came to a stop.
An image released by police showed the space rock next to a damaged, cracked floor.
Suzy Kop, a resident of the home, told CBS Philadelphia that meteorite landed in her father's bedroom, but no one was home.
Police said that they have contacted several other agencies to positively identify the object and for help "safeguarding the residents and the object." They said that the object could be connected to an ongoing meteor shower called the Eta Aquariids, an event related to Halley's Comet that is visible from mid-April to late May and usually peaks around May 5 each year.
There was apparently a claim of a meteorite hitting a home in California last year. But it's been disputed, although some folks caught a 'fireball' on dashcams, and a neighbor said he heard a loud bang and come out to see his neighbor's house on fire.Vanadium 50 said:On the other, I expect one meteorite to hit a roof in ths US every 40 years or so. So it's not so rare as to be nearly impossible, nor so common that we can come up with other examples.
One of the more famous of these extraterrestrial rock incidents occurred in 2010, when a half-pound meteorite struck a doctor's office in Virgina at up to 200 miles per hour.
"It went through the roof. It [went] through one wall partition and then passed through a particle board ceiling into the floor of an examination room," Linda Welzenbach, manager of the meteorite collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, told Space.com at the time.
More recently, a dog house that was hit by a meteorite in 2019 fetched more than $44,000 at a Christie's auction in New York. At the same sale, the actual rock that pierced a hole in the metal kennel sold for more than $21,000.
Chondrites are primitive rocks that make up 85% of meteorites found on Earth. Most chondrites found to date have been discovered in Antarctica; only rarely does one crash in populated areas.
The New Jersey rock, which is about 6 inches long by 4 inches wide (15 by 10 centimeters), is a notable exception. It slammed into the Hopewell Township house, dented the floorboard, punched two holes in the ceiling and was still warm when it was discovered by Suzy Kop in her father's bedroom around noon on Monday.
"I'm looking up on the ceiling and there's these two holes, and I'm like, 'What in the world has happened here?'" Kop said
At TCNJ, Magee's team consulted Jerry Delaney, a retired meteorite expert who had worked on the meteorite collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The team confirmed the space rock to be about 4.56 billion years old, which means it has been around since the beginning of our solar system and represents the leftover fragments from its creation.
Based on initial estimates, the meteorite is a chondrite of class LL-6, which has less iron than other members of its family and is at least 30 to 40% denser than the most common rocks on Earth, like slate or granite.
That is because populated areas are rare. There is a difference between the random statistics of crash location, and the chance of being noticed for what they are.Most chondrites found to date have been discovered in Antarctica; only rarely does one crash in populated areas.
The space rock was likely quite small, between 1.6 and 3.2 feet (0.5 and 1 meter) across, and could have been traveling up to 93,000 mph (150,000 km/h), Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University in Canberra, told The Guardian. Any fragments that crashed to Earth would likely have been very small and were likely still frozen, he added.
Most bolides emit a white or yellow light when they explode. The unusual green flash of the meteor that exploded above Croydon was caused by a high concentration of metals such as iron and nickel in the meteor, Tucker said.
Similar green light can also be given off by fireball meteors, which are extremely bright meteors that break apart in Earth's atmosphere but do not explode with the same intensity. In August 2022, a green fireball was spotted above New Zealand, and in November 2022, another one crashed into Lake Ontario.
Bolides occur in Earth's atmosphere relatively frequently. Between July 2017 and January 2022, astronomers detected around 3,000 bolides, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. But observers on the ground witness only a few of these blasts each year, because most of the explosions happen away from populated areas or above the ocean.
I'll have to keep an eye out for it at eBay ...pinball1970 said:As an aside, this would be worth a lot of money?
It is new, large (2.2lbs or a Kg in new money) AND rare.
@DennisN
I'd bet the insurance company would pay, but it would need to take ownership of the rock. The owner will probably be able to get a whole new house by selling it on eBay.Baluncore said:I know a beach where there are iron rich rocks that look just like that. Maybe someone put a rock in the oven to heat it up, then did a GPS-guided drone-drop from a thousand feet at night, onto their enemies house. I wonder if an insurance company would refuse to pay out, on what appears to be an act of God.
The owner should tweet about it asking if there are takers, making sure to reference the Chief Twit himself.pinball1970 said:As an aside, this would be worth a lot of money?
It is new, large (2.2lbs or a Kg in new money) AND rare.
@DennisN
The pebble looked similar to volcanic rock, but it showed signs that it had been superheated in the atmosphere. It was mainly made from iron and silicon, which are common in meteorites, Rebmann told local news site France Bleu Alsace. "Finding a meteorite is rare, but in addition to being in direct contact and having it fall on you from the sky, it's an almost unique case," he added (translated from French).
However, some experts have questioned whether the rock is actually a meteorite, France Bleu Alsace reported, although none of these experts have been named and their reasons for doubting Rebmann's findings are unclear. (Rebmann suggested that other scientists should examine the rock, as he is not a meteorite expert.)
A follow up.Astronuc said:Woman in France hit by suspected meteorite while drinking coffee on her porch
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/woman-france-hit-suspected-meteorite-180834533.html