Rock that crashed through New Jersey home may be 5 billion-year-old chunk of Halley’s Comet

A rock prone to be a meteorite crashed right into a New Jersey dwelling on Monday (Might 8), damaging a bed room however inflicting no accidents.

Nobody was at Suzy Kop’s dwelling in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, when the house rock made its entrance, in accordance with CBS Information Philadelphia (opens in new tab), which first reported the bizarre occasion. The meteorite landed round 1 p.m. EDT, crashing by the roof and touchdown within the bed room belonging to Kop’s father. Judging by the harm, the meteorite hit the ground, bounced to the ceiling, and got here to relaxation within the nook of a room. The metallic rock measures about 4 inches by 6 inches (10 by 15 centimeters).

“I did contact the factor as a result of I believed it was a random rock… and it was heat,” Kop advised CBS Information.

Authorities are nonetheless investigating the origin of the obvious house rock, however Derrick Pitts (opens in new tab), the chief astronomer at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, advised CBS Information that it might be 4 to 5 billion years previous. It’s attainable that the meteorite was a part of the continued Eta Aquarid meteor bathe, which roughly happens between April 19 and Might 29 every year, and which reached its peak round Might 5 and 6. Throughout peak days, the bathe can produce a whole lot of “taking pictures stars” per hour – most of that are meteors that dissipate within the environment. These meteors are the rocky particles left by Halley’s Comet, which turns into seen from Earth each 75 to 79 years, in accordance with NASA (opens in new tab).

“For it to really strike a home, for folks to have the ability to decide up, that is actually uncommon and has occurred only a few instances in historical past,” Pitts mentioned.

Meteors enter Earth’s environment on a regular basis, however most dissipate earlier than hitting the bottom. On uncommon events, people who do land trigger harm to buildings. For example, in 2015, a 1.6 pound (712 gram) meteorite crashed into a house in San Carlos, Uruguay, destroying a mattress and tv (opens in new tab). In 2021, a British Columbia girl woke to a loud noise and found a fist-sized rock between her pillows; it turned out to be a fragment of a meteor that exploded in midair (opens in new tab), inflicting a fireball. In Nov. 2022, it’s thought {that a} meteorite influence could have brought on a California home to burst into flames.

Small meteorites have additionally been reported crashing by buildings in Sumatra in 2020, in Connecticut (opens in new tab) in 1982, and in Auckland (opens in new tab) in 2004. Fortunately, nobody has been injured in these incidents; the one identified instance of a individual hit by a meteorite (opens in new tab) occurred in Alabama in 1954, when an 8.5 pound (3.8 kilogram) house rock crashed into a girl’s dwelling, hit her radio, and struck her leg, leaving a big bruise.

The meteor occasion that brought on probably the most accidents didn’t contain anybody being hit immediately by an area rock. In February 2013, a meteor estimated at 59 toes (18 m) in diameter zinged into Earth’s environment and exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia. The ensuing fireball blew out home windows and broken buildings, inflicting greater than 1,600 reported accidents as a result of flying glass and particles, in accordance with NASA (opens in new tab).

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