Fragments of a meteorite that hit a house on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in July 2024.
College of Alberta Meteorite Assortment
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College of Alberta Meteorite Assortment
When Joe Velaidum and his companion Laura Kelly stepped outdoors on a July afternoon to stroll their canine in Prince Edward Island, Canada, he wasn’t anticipating to return residence to one thing out of this world.
“We were startled to find the walkway littered with debris. Stones everywhere. They were scattered everywhere. And at first, we had no idea what caused it,” Velaidum tells NPR.
In reality, Velaidum thought it was one thing that fell off the roof and started to wash up the grey, dusty materials. Kelly’s mother and father, who dwell close by, informed them they’d heard a loud bang. They recommended it might have been a meteorite strike.
Velaidum checked his residence safety footage and realized they have been proper.
The meteorite strike is believed to be the primary time the whole sound of a meteorite hitting Earth has been recorded on video, one skilled says.
“I’ve heard that other times sound has been recorded, but not like this: Where you see the rock hit the surface, shatter and then you hear the sound at the same time,” Chris Herd, professor and curator of the meteorite assortment on the College of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, tells NPR.
Velaidum says he was fortunate: Simply minutes earlier, he had been standing the place the meteorite smashed in opposition to a brick walkway.
Mud from a meteorite that hit a house on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in July 2024.
By way of College of Alberta Meteorite Assortment
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By way of College of Alberta Meteorite Assortment
“Had I stayed in that very spot for just a minute or two longer, I’d certainly have been struck and probably killed by this meteorite,” he says, including that it hit the bottom with “tremendous force” and left a small dent within the walkway.
Meteors enter the ambiance at speeds starting from 25,000 mph to 160,000 mph, in response to the American Meteor Society.
Velaidum reported the incident to the College of Alberta’s Meteorite Reporting System, and Herd retrieved particles samples for testing, which confirmed it was a meteorite strike.
A ‘tough trip’ by way of the heavens
The meteorite — which Herd estimated to have been between the dimensions of a golf ball and a baseball — is what’s often called an abnormal chondrite, some of the widespread kinds of meteorites that strike the Earth. They’re made up of chondrules, or small, spherical grains of silicate minerals resembling olivine and pyroxene. Herd believes the meteorite that struck Velaidum’s property got here from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The meteorite traveled by way of the chilly depths of area at 1000’s of miles an hour and encountered scorching temperatures by way of Earth’s ambiance, doubtless breaking apart in the course of the “rough ride,” Herd says.
Not less than 48 tons of meteorite-like materials fall to the Earth day-after-day, in response to NASA. The probabilities of any of that materials hitting a human are slim, however there have been different shut encounters up to now. Meteorites usually tend to land in water, since it covers 71% of the Earth’s floor, Herd says.
Velaidum says the incident initially made him cautious, and he appeared up every time he stepped outdoors. However after some reflection, the expertise made him rethink his priorities and what’s most essential in life, he says.
“We think our lives are so important when we fill it up with our egos, and there are these cosmic events that just dwarf our little concerns,” he says. “And this is a tiny little event when it comes down to it in the cosmic scheme of things, but it’s such an eye-opener.”
