470-million-year asteroid's journey to Earth ends with meteorite blasting a hole in Georgia man's house

Economic Times

6 days ago

Synopsis
A meteorite that smashed through a home in McDonough, Georgia, has been found to be 4.56 billion years old, making it about 20 million years older than Earth. The fragment, from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, struck the roof, tore through the ceiling and floor, and left a small crater. Scientists say the rock offers clues about the early solar system. The meteorite, now named McDonough, is Georgia's 27th recorded find and will be displayed at the Tellus Science Museum.
TIL Creatives Representative AI Image On 26 June, a bright fireball cut across the midday sky over Georgia and parts of South Carolina. NASA later confirmed it exploded over Georgia, producing booms heard across several counties. Among those watching was a McDonough homeowner who moments later discovered a hole in his roof.
University of Georgia geologist Scott Harris was called to investigate. 'A lot of people saw the fireball,' he told Fox News Digital. 'The homeowner didn't know that they actually had a clean hole through the roof, through an air duct... through a couple of feet of insulation, then through the ceiling... and left about a centimetre-and-a-half little crater in the floor.'
The rock, about the size of a cherry tomato, tore through the house at supersonic speed. 'And so this hit hard enough that part of it just absolutely was pulverised like somebody hitting it with a sledgehammer,' Harris said.Harris examined 23 grams of recovered fragments using optical and electron microscopes. His conclusion: the meteorite formed 4.56 billion years ago, making it roughly 20 million years older than Earth's estimated 4.54 billion years.'These are objects that go back to the original material formed 4.56 billion years ago,' Harris said. 'So, in the days slightly before the formation of the planets themselves, and at least the rocky interior planets. And... those are the basic building blocks then of our rocky planets.'
The meteorite is classified as a low-metal ordinary chondrite. Harris believes it came from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and can be traced to the breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago.The homeowner told Harris he is still finding specks of space dust in his living room. Harris suspects he heard three things at once: the meteorite striking the roof, a sonic boom, and the final hit on the floor. The sound, he explained, would have been similar to 'a very high-powered rifle' fired at close range.The fragment posed no danger, but Harris said such studies help assess the risk of larger, potentially hazardous objects. 'No one's got to do anything about a small object like this coming through the atmosphere, but understanding where these materials come from... is important for ultimately understanding where the bigger ones are and what the risks are for us in the future,' he said.He pointed to NASA's DART mission, in which a spacecraft nudged an asteroid off course. 'If you move an asteroid headed toward us, and you move it early enough, then you get it to avoid us altogether,' Harris said.The McDonough meteorite is the 27th recovered in Georgia and only the sixth witnessed fall in the state. 'This is something that used to be expected once every few decades and not multiple times within 20 years,' Harris said. 'Modern technology in addition to an attentive public is going to help us recover more and more meteorites.'Fragments will go on public display at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville once scientific analysis is complete.