Ancient Space Rock Shatters Georgia Home—Its Origins Predate Earth Itself!
Others who didn’t see the meteorite heard the sonic boom it created — and one resident in McDonough had an even closer encounter with it. A fragment of the space rock about the size of a cherry tomato tore through his roof, air duct, insulation, and ceiling before landing on his floor, leaving a half-inch crater. “There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments,” said Scott Harris, a planetary geologist at the University of Georgia who analyzed the meteorite.
University of GeorgiaThe cherry tomato sized rock crashed through the man’s roof and became lodged in the floor.
Reportedly, the man is still finding meteorite dust in his home. The fragments of the space rock that were lodged in the floor were collected and studied by researchers to determine their age and composition.
“This particular meteor that entered the atmosphere has a long history before it made it to the ground of McDonough,” said Harris, “and in order to totally understand that, we actually have to examine what the rock is and determine what group of asteroids it belongs to.”
Analysis revealed that the space rock, dubbed the McDonough Meteorite, was an ordinary chondrite, the most common type of meteorite recovered from Earth. Scientists were also able to determine that the meteorite formed about 4.56 billion years ago, making it older than the Earth, which is approximately 4.54 billion years old.
Harris explained, “It belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago.”
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