An object thought to be a meteorite crashed into a bedroom in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, on Monday, May 8th. A scientific investigation will be launched into the incident. A rock, possibly a meteorite, slammed into a house in New Jersey, injuring a bedroom but harming no one.
According to CBS News Philadelphia, which first broke the news, no one was home when the space stone arrived at Suzy Kop's home in Hopewell Township, New Jersey. At about 13:00, the descending meteorite crashed into the ceiling and fell into Kop's father's bedroom. According to the damage, the meteorite hit the ground, hit the ceiling, and then fell into the corner of a room. The metallic stone is about 4 inches in diameter.
The metallic stone measures roughly 4 by 6 inches (10 by 15 centimeters).
“I touched that thing because I believed it was a random pebble… and it was hot,” Kop told CBS News.
Derrick Pitts (opens in new tab), chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, told CBS News that the visible space rock could be between 4 and 5 billion years old. However, authorities are still investigating the origin of the object. The meteorite may be part of the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, which usually lasts from April 19 to May 29 each year and peaks around May 5 and 6.
Rain can produce hundreds of “shooting stars” every hour on busy days; Most of these meteors burn up in the atmosphere.
These meteorites are formed from the stony remnants of Halley's Comet, which can be seen from Earth every 75 to 79 years, according to NASA.
Pitts added, "It's really unusual for it to hit a house, for people to be able to notice it, and it's a rare occurrence in history."
Every day, meteorites enter Earth's atmosphere, but the vast majority burn up before they reach the ground. Drops also rarely damage structures. For example, in 2015, a 1,6-pound (712-gram) meteor hit a house in San Carlos, Uruguay, destroying the bed and television in the house.
In 2021, a meteorite was found between the pillows of a woman in British Columbia who woke up to a loud noise and noticed a fist-sized boulder between her pillows, which exploded in midair and created a fireball. A meteor strike is suspected to have caused a house to catch fire in California in November 2022.
There are also reports of small meteorites hitting buildings in Connecticut in 1982, Auckland in 2004, and Sumatra in 2020. The only documented instance of a meteor hitting a human occurred in 1954 in Alabama, when a 3,8-kilogram space rock crashed into a woman's home, shattering her radio, and smashing her hip, leaving a significant bruise. Fortunately, no one was injured in any of these incidents.
No one was hit directly by a space stone in the meteor event that caused the most injuries. A meteor reportedly 59 feet (18 meters) in diameter blasted into the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013. According to NASA, the ensuing fireball caused more than 1.600 injuries, collapsed structures, and burst windows from flying glass and debris.
Source: livescience.com/space
Günceleme: 12/05/2023 17:25