This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you’ll be able to go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.onlineathens.com/story/news/2025/08/13/meteorite-crashed-georgia-home-older-earth/85622978007/
and if you wish to take away this text from our web site please contact us
A meteorite that crashed into a house in Georgia is believed to have originated from the primary asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, making it 4.56 billion years previous.
Fireball streaks throughout South Carolina skies
Dash digital camera footage captured a fireball because it streaked throughout the skies over South Carolina.
- Multiple fragments of the house rock that tore via a house about 65 miles southwest of Athens had been just lately analyzed on the University of Georgia to find out its origin.
- A geologist on the college has since concluded that the meteorite belongs to a gaggle of asteroids in our photo voltaic system’s fundamental asteroid belt, making the house rock older than Earth.
- The house rock brought about fairly a stir in June when it was broadly noticed careening throughout the U.S. in an occasion that many witnesses described as a “fireball.”
A meteorite that just lately gave one Georgia resident fairly a shock when it crashed via his roof spent an terrible very long time making a cosmic journey that resulted in a front room.
Multiple fragments of the house rock that tore via a house about 65 miles southwest of Athens had been just lately analyzed on the University of Georgia to determine its origin. A geologist on the college has since concluded that the meteorite belongs to a gaggle of asteroids in our photo voltaic system’s fundamental asteroid belt, making the house rock older than Earth, the University of Georgia mentioned in a press release.
The house rock is one and the identical that caused quite a stir in June when it was broadly noticed careening throughout the U.S. in an occasion that many witnesses described as a “fireball.”
Here’s what to know in regards to the meteorite and the way a Georgia scientist decided its historical age.
Fragments of meteorite crashed into Georgia house
A large house rock that hurtled into Earth’s ambiance June 26 broke into smaller items because it plummeted to the bottom, a cherry tomato-sized fragment of which crashed into a house in Georgia.
Our ambiance did its job of slowing down a cosmic object hurtling at supersonic speeds past the velocity of sound. Even nonetheless, the meteorite had sufficient momentum to interrupt via a person’s roof and his HVAC duct, depart a stable dent in his flooring and make a sound and vibration equal to a close-range gunshot, in keeping with the University of Georgia.
Scott Harris, a geologist on the University of Georgia, was in a position to analyze fragments of the house rock, specks of which the resident advised Harris he’s nonetheless discovering in his front room.
“I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things,” Harris said in a statment. “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 … There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments.”
Meteorite believed to be older than Earth
The college acquired 23 grams of the 50 thus far recovered from the meteorite chunk that crashed into the home.
After his evaluation, Harris decided that he believes the house rock to be a Low Metal (L) unusual Chondrite – a sort of stony meteorite originating in the primary asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
That means the meteorite would have shaped 4.56 billion years in the past, making it older than the Earth itself. By comparability, the Earth is barely 4.54 billion years previous, in keeping with the Planetary Society.
The meteorite has been named the McDonough Meteorite, named for the town in Henry County by which it was discovered.
Meteorite described as ‘fireball’ noticed acros US
The meteorite caught caught the attention of people throughout the Southeast U.S. when it appeared as a fireball fragmenting within the sky.
Bill Cooke, the chief of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office on the company’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, beforehand advised the USA TODAY Network that the space rock was about three toes in diameter and weighed a couple of ton.
When it was first noticed, the meteor was shifting southwest at 30,000 miles per hour, he added.
The American Meteor Society received nearly 150 reports of a meteor shiny sufficient to be seen streaking throughout the noon sky starting round midday native time Thursday, June 26. Most of the reviews had been from Georgia and South Carolina, however just a few witnessed the thing in Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina.
Some folks additionally reported experiencing what they believed had been earthquakes, which meteorologist have since clarified had been sonic booms. The transient, thunder-like noises are sometimes heard from the bottom when spacecraft, plane or itinerant house rocks journey sooner than the velocity of sound.
That’s as a result of when the meteor disintegrated 27 miles above West Forest, Georgia, it unleashed the vitality of about 20 tons of TNT, Cooke mentioned.
What is a meteorite? How uncommon is a ‘fireball’ meteor?
Rocks in house are generally known as meteoroids. If these house rocks enter Earth’s ambiance, they turn into meteors that streak throughout the sky in occasions colloquially known as “shooting stars.”
Meteors – or fragments of them – that survive their atmospheric journey and land on the floor with out burning up turn into meteorites, according to NASA.
What many witnessed just lately was a really shiny meteor generally known as a fireball related to the annual Bootid meteor bathe. It’s comparatively uncommon for fireballs to be sighted on Earth, particularly throughout the daytime, because the objects typically need to be at the very least as shiny as Venus to be seen to the bare eye, according to the American Meteor Society.
Where is the meteorite now?
The McDonough Meteorite is the twenty seventh meteorite ever recovered in Georgia, in keeping with the University of Georgia.
The meteorite shall be saved on the University of Georgia so it may be studied additional. Additional items that additionally fell within the space shall be on show on the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia, round 43 miles northwest of Atlanta and 100 miles northwest of Athens.
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you’ll be able to go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.onlineathens.com/story/news/2025/08/13/meteorite-crashed-georgia-home-older-earth/85622978007/
and if you wish to take away this text from our web site please contact us
