When you hear the word “meteor,” you probably think of the so-called shooting star. These are streaks of light across the night sky as tiny pieces of space debris, usually about the size of a grain of sand, speed through Earth’s atmosphere. It burns due to friction with air molecules. If you tend to be more devastating, you might think of larger masses that explode in transit, creating powerful shockwaves. A good example is the explosion that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in early 2013, injuring about 1,500 people. and damage thousands of buildings. Another, an object that exploded in 1908 over an area near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, scorched and flattened trees in a remote area nearly twice the size of Hong Kong. Large ‘space rocks’ can also reach the surface of the Earth, such as the giant asteroids and comets that collided with what is now the Gulf of Mexico about 66 million years ago, ending the reign of the dinosaurs.
you probably please do not Imagine meteorites big and small falling on your house. But Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb has calculated that while such an event is unlikely, it does occur somewhere on Earth, on average, once a year. In 1954, a napping woman in Sylacauga, Alabama, was severely bruised by an 8.5-pound meteorite (a term used to describe meteorites that reach the surface of the Earth) that fell from her roof.It both happened in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1971. and 1982 (no crew injuries in either case). And while this incident didn’t involve housing, in 1992 in Peekskill, New York, a meteor hit the trunk of a red Chevrolet Malibu, turning the rocks of space red.
Exactly two weeks ago the same thing happened again. On May 8, a meteorite weighing about 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) crashed through the roof of a man’s home near Titusville, New Jersey. It was just a short distance from where George Washington crossed the Delaware River. The man’s daughter, Christine Lloyd, told Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based television station WPVI, that it bounced between the floor and ceiling and landed in the upstairs bedroom. Lloyd’s sister, Susie Kopp, was the one who found the object at her father’s house. At first she had no idea what it was. She was “warm,” Kopp told WPVI. “It sure was warm… I thought it was a random stone from the outside. Why is it in the bedroom?”
Kopp called the police, who immediately contacted the nearby University of New Jersey (TCNJ), where physics department chair Nathan B. McGee confirmed the object was a meteorite. “About 70 percent of it was covered by a molten crust, a coating formed by intense frictional heating as the object traveled through the atmosphere at high speed,” he says. “But about 30 percent were cracked, allowing us to see the minerals inside.” From this, McGee et al. In contrast, they identified it as a meteorite composed primarily of rock. Chondrites represent part of the original material from which planets and asteroids were formed about 4.5 billion years ago. As a result, they are an important window into the formation of the solar system.
Of particular interest to meteorite scientists are inclusions in meteorites called chondrules (from which the word “chondrite” comes), writes geochemist Alan E. Rubin of the University of California, Los Angeles: . Scientific American In 2013, it said, “Tiny beads of molten material, often smaller than grains of rice, that formed before asteroids formed early in the history of the solar system.” It helps us understand the structure and composition of the gas and dust nebulae that formed the asteroids. But the Titusville meteorite apparently has few such inclusions.
“It’s kind of surprising,” says Jeremy S. Delaney, a former meteorite scientist who worked at Rutgers University and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. He learned of the Titusville incident when a friend of a friend of his sent an email containing a link to a report on the incident and asked Mr. Delaney if he heard about it. He had not, so he called the Hopewell Township Police Department and was directed to go to TCNJ. Delaney was there when Copp brought the meteorite to Maggie for inspection. “It was in a police evidence bag,” Delaney says. “As soon as they brought it up, I said, ‘This is beautiful.'” He explains that the object is so beautiful because it was completely fresh. Chondrites make up about 85 percent of all meteorites, according to meteorite expert Denton S. Ebel of AMNH. Most of them fall into the sea unnoticed. And those that fall to land usually remain undiscovered. If discovered, it is almost always after years of erosion and exposure to environmental pollutants. In this case there was no such thing at all. Aside from the cracked crust, Copp’s space rock was in pristine condition. And what confirms that the object is indeed a meteorite is the fact that it was tracked by radar as it passed through the atmosphere, McGee said. He added that at least one of the few people who witnessed the violent fall reported that the fireball split into multiple streams of light. That means more debris may still be awaiting discovery. “I heard people were looking for them in the fields,” says Magee.
All these reports, along with the various holes and dents that chondrites have made in houses, should help scientists reconstruct the direction of chondrite travel and possibly identify where in space they came from. Both are valuable in trying to understand the origin of meteorites. However, further research in the laboratory offers the best chance of pinpointing its formation history. Unfortunately, the scanning electron microscope Magee was using at TCNJ “wasn’t equipped to do all sorts of chemical analyses,” says Delaney. At least they weren’t available on that fateful day. “His X-ray detector on the microscope wasn’t working,” McGee says. “But a technician is coming to fix it.”
In the meantime, Delaney and Ebell hope Kopp will take the meteorite to a more sophisticated laboratory like AMNH, and perhaps donate it to the permanent collection of AMNH or another museum. It may be possible. Delaney says he discussed both options with Kopp during the meteorite’s first lab tests. “My understanding is that [Kop and her family] They are very interested in perfecting science,” he says.
But Delaney and Ebell stress that Chondrite’s fate is entirely a family decision. Because the family has the right to the meteorite. Delaney and Ebell argue that it is inappropriate for scientists and the general public to pressure members. The family can choose to keep the object or sell it to private collectors, who have reportedly already received offers in the $10,000 to $20,000 range.
If any of these scenarios were carried out, the Titusville meteorite could be virtually lost to science. But what does science really lose? Of course, this celestial body could be another brick building our understanding of the solar system’s deepest history, but how do planets and asteroids work? It’s unlikely to be a particularly special object that would somehow revolutionize our understanding of what happened. Still, Delaney says, “It’s always nice to have another meteorite to enrich the picture.”
