A piece of space rock that crashed into a home in Georgia’s Atlanta earlier this year is believed to be over four and a half billion years old, according to researchers from the University of Georgia, People magazine reported. It has been named as ‘McDonough Meteorite‘ in reference to the namesake city in Henry County. The space rock crash-landed in this region on June 26.
What to know?
The fragments that tore through the residential roof were later provided to a UGA planetary geologist and impact expert to gain significant insights about their origin and classification.
Scott Harris, a UGA Geology Department researcher, said the particular meteor, which entered the planet’s atmosphere, has a “long history before it made it to the ground of McDonough, and in order to totally understand that, we actually have to examine what the rock is and determine what group of asteroids it belongs to”.
While the pieces that fell were diminished in size, Harris stated that it was useful to understand how much the Earth could handle a much larger inbound space rock.
Scientists noted that meteorites are capable of traveling faster than the speed of sound once they enter the atmosphere.
“When they encounter Earth, our atmosphere is very good at slowing them down. But you’re talking about something that is double the size of a 50-caliber shell, going at least 1 kilometer per second. That’s like running 10 football fields in one second,” Harris said in a statement.
Researchers said the McDonough Meteorite sounded like a “close-range gunshot” upon its landing. At the time, it crashed through the roof of a house and HVAC duct before denting the floor.
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They added that the owner of the property still gets to discover space dust in his living room. Harris suspects that the person heard three simultaneous sounds, which included a roof collision, one with a tiny cone of a sonic boom, and the last when it impacted the floor.
All of this happened in the “same moment,” Harris said. “There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments,” he added.
For their analysis, the researchers at the University of Georgia were provided 23 of the 50 grams of space rock discovered at the property.
They found out that the low-metal ordinary chondrite is likely 4.56 billion years old, which means it is 20 million years older than the Earth.
Harris said 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”.
FAQs
When was the space rock given McDonough Meteorite name?
This was done in a nod to the namesake city in Henry County, where it originally landed in June.
How old is Earth?
Earth is nearly 4.54 billion years old.
Where does McDonough Meteorite belong?
Researchers feel it comes from a “group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter”.
