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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Metal Object Crashes Through N.J. Home

On Tuesday night, this golf ball-sized rock crashed through the roof of a house in Momouth County, New Jersey, and got stuck in a wall. The 13+ ounce rock has yet to be identified. The Federal Aviation Administration says that it's not a chunk of aircraft.

From the Associated Press:
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) - A metal, rock-like object about the size of a golf ball and weighing nearly as much as a can of soup crashed through the roof of a Monmouth County home, and authorities on Wednesday were trying to figure out what it was.

Nobody was injured when the oblong object, weighing more than 13 ounces, crashed into the home and embedded itself in a wall Tuesday night. Federal officials sent to the scene said it was not from an aircraft.

The rough-feeling object, with a metallic glint, was displayed Wednesday by police. "There's some great interest in what we have here," said Lt. Robert Brightman. "It's rather unusual. I haven't seen anything like it in my career."

He said he hoped to have the object identified within 72 hours, but declined to name the other agencies whose help he said he had enlisted.


Police received a call Wednesday morning that the metal object had punched a hole in the roof of a single-family, two-story home, damaged tiles on a bathroom floor below and then bounced, sticking into a wall.

The object was heavier than a usual metal object of that size, said Brightman, who added that no radioactivity was detected.

Brightman would not disclose the address of the house or the names of the people who lived there, citing the family's desire to not talk to the media. He would only say that the couple and their adult son live in a township housing development.

Brightman said one man who lives at the home found the object at about 9 p.m. Tuesday after returning from work and hearing from his mother that something had crashed through the roof a few hours before.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which sent investigators to the town, did not know where the object came from, said spokeswoman Arlene Murray.

"It's definitely not an aircraft part," she said. "I can't speak beyond that as to what it might be."

Approximately 20 to 50 rock-like objects fall every day over the entire planet, said Carlton Pryor, a professor of astronomy at Rutgers University.

"It's not all that uncommon to have rocks rain down from heaven," said Pryor, who had not seen the object that struck the Monmouth County home. "These are usually rocky or a mixture of rock and metal."

Pryor said laboratory tests would have to be conducted to determine if the object were a meteorite.

Source: apnews.excite.com/article/20070103/D8ME3B8G1.html

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Looks like a gold filling... ;D

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Mysterious Object Crashes Through Roof

FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) -- Authorities were trying to identify a mysterious metallic object that crashed through the roof of a house in eastern New Jersey.

Nobody was injured when the golf-ball sized object, weighing nearly as much as a can of soup, struck the home and embedded itself in a wall Tuesday night. Federal officials sent to the scene said it was not from an aircraft.

The rough-surfaced object, with a metallic glint, was displayed Wednesday by police.

"There's some great interest in what we have here," said Lt. Robert Brightman. "It's rather unusual. I haven't seen anything like it in my career."

He said he hoped to have the object identified within 72 hours, but declined to name the other agencies whose help he has enlisted.

Approximately 20 to 50 rock-like objects fall every day over the entire planet, said Carlton Pryor, a professor of astronomy at Rutgers University.

"It's not all that uncommon to have rocks rain down from heaven," said Pryor, who had not seen the object that struck the Monmouth County home. "These are usually rocky or a mixture of rock and metal." Pryor said laboratory tests would have to be conducted to determine if the object was a meteorite.

Police received a call Wednesday morning that the metal object had punched a hole in the roof of the single-family, two-story home, damaged tiles on a bathroom floor, and then bounced, sticking into a wall. The object was heavier than a usual metal object of its size, said Brightman, who added that no radioactivity was detected.

Brightman would not disclose the address of the house or the names of the people who lived there, citing the family's desire to not talk to the media. He would only say that the couple and their adult son live in a township housing development.

Brightman said one man who lives at the home found the object at about 9 p.m. Tuesday after returning from work and hearing from his mother that something had crashed through the roof a few hours earlier.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which sent investigators to the town, did not know where the object came from, said spokeswoman Arlene Murray. "It's definitely not an aircraft part," she said. "I can't speak beyond that as to what it might be."

In the neighborhood later in the day, residents chatted with each other in the streets about the fallen object, but none said they knew which house had been hit. Robert Nalven, 55, said nothing this exciting had happened in the six years he's lived in the affluent development. "I'm happy it didn't hit my house," he said.

Source: www.livescience.com/othernews/070104_ap_mystery_object.html

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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Fallen rock is a meteorite, scientists say

Upon further review, it came from outer space after all.

The fist-sized hunk of rock that smashed through the roof of a Freehold Township home earlier this week was declared a genuine meteorite yesterday, making a bit of New Jersey history and solving a riddle that had everyone from local police to the Federal Aviation Administration hunting for answers.

Three Rutgers University geologists and an independent scientist determined the dense, kidney-shaped mass had been hurtling around the universe for some 4.6 billion years before ending its galactic journey Tuesday afternoon in a second-floor bathroom.

"This little guy is a meteorite," said Jeremy Delaney, who examined the object with Rutgers colleagues Gail Ashley and Claire Condie. An independent metallurgist, Peter Elliott, reached the same conclusion.

"This would be a class of meteorites almost as old as the oldest things we know," Delaney said "This is true solar system material."

While strikes by rocklike objects from space are not rare -- an estimated 20 to 50 rocky objects from outside the Earth's atmosphere pelt the planet daily -- most meteorites are not recovered, and New Jersey had been in a long space-rock drought.

The last documented strike took place in Deal on Aug. 15, 1829.

Delaney, who has verified only three meteorites from among all the objects brought to him in his 30-year career, said he's surprised there haven't been more.

"It amazes me a state this big, with this many people, hasn't had more falls observed and more materials collected," he said. "Most objects I've seen have been meteor-wrongs. This was a meteor-right."

The grayish-brown chunk, given the rather lackluster nickname "Freehold Township," hails from the asteroid belt, a rock-strewn expanse between Mars and Jupiter. It's either the core of a very tiny heavenly body or the fragment of a larger one that broke up sometime over the eons.

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