A meteorite that tore through the sky in June shaking the Southeast with a sonic increase is now believed to be 4.56 billion years previous, in accordance to researchers who studied it following its crash touchdown.
Fragments of the extraterrestrial rock have been turned over to scientists after they fell to Earth this summer to decide their classification and origin.
The University of Georgia acquired 23 of the 50 grams of the McDonough Meteorite, named after the Georgia metropolis the place it ripped by means of the roof and ceiling of a house, in accordance to the university.
“This particular meteor that entered the atmosphere has a long history before it made it to the ground of McDonough,” Scott Harris, a researcher in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences’ division of geology, mentioned in the information launch.
Harris determined the meteorite to be a Low Metal (L) peculiar Chondrite – a sort of stony meteorite – and thus 20 million years older than Earth by “using optical and electron microscopy,” the college mentioned.
“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,” Harris mentioned in the discharge. “But in that breakup, some pieces get into Earth-crossing orbits, and if given long enough, their orbit around the sun and Earth’s orbit around the sun end up being at the same place, at the same moment in time.”
UGA can be working with companions at Arizona State University to submit the meteorite’s identify and findings to the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society, Harris mentioned. Harris additionally plans to publish a scientific paper concerning the rock to additional perceive the potential threats meteorites pose.
“One day there will be an opportunity, and we never know when it’s going to be, for something large to hit and create a catastrophic situation. If we can guard against that, we want to,” he mentioned.
The American Meteor Society acquired quite a few experiences of a fireball over the area on June 26, NCS previously reported. The experiences got here in the course of the Bootids meteor bathe, a lower-level celestial occasion that was ongoing over the past week of June.
A Henry County, Georgia, resident had reported on the time that a rock – which might later be recognized because the McDonough Meteorite – fell by means of their ceiling across the identical time the June fireball occurred, in accordance to the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. The object had damaged by means of the roof and ceiling earlier than cracking the flooring inside the house.
“I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things. One was the collision with his roof, one was a tiny cone of a sonic boom and a third was it impacting the floor all in the same moment,” Harris mentioned in the information launch. “There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments.”
The resident advised Harris he’s nonetheless discovering specks of house mud round his front room from the collision, in accordance to the college. The rock is the twenty seventh meteorite in historical past recovered in Georgia and the sixth witnessed fall.
Seeing a daytime fireball is a uncommon incidence: Fireballs are simpler to view at evening, however should be a lot brighter to be seen in the course of the day, the American Meteor Society says. It’s additionally “quite rare” for sonic booms to be heard on the bottom when a fireball happens, in accordance to the group.
A fireball is an unusually brilliant meteor that reaches a magnitude over -4, which is brighter than Venus, in accordance to the American Meteor Society. June’s fireball reached a magnitude of round -14, the society advised NCS, which might have made it brighter than the total moon.
It didn’t take the McDonough house rock pummeling by means of roofs for others to spot it.
In Lexington County, South Carolina, dashcam video confirmed an enormous flash of sunshine falling by means of the sky on June 26.
Brenda Eckard, 64, from Gilbert, South Carolina, beforehand advised NCS she was driving dwelling that June day when she noticed a “big flash in the sky come down and disappear.”
She first thought it was a meteor that “almost looked like a firework,” Eckard mentioned. Eckard then referred to as her husband to test if their home was nonetheless standing.
The McDonough Meteorite is being saved at UGA for continued exams, in accordance to UGA Today. Other items of it that fell on June 26 will be publicly displayed on the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia.
NCS’s Devon Sayers, Brandon Miller and Zenebou Sylla contributed to this report.