A 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite fell on a house in the USA
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A meteorite fell on the roof of a residential building in the American city of Hopewell, New Jersey. Scientists have confirmed that it was a rare meteorite that is 4.6 billion years old, reports Space. “It was immediately obvious that it was a meteorite from a class called a stony chondrite,” said Nathan Magee, chair of the physics department at the College of New Jersey. Chondrites are rocks that make up 85% of meteorites found on Earth. Most of the chondrites found so far have been found in Antarctica. A meteorite crashed into a house in Hopewell on May 8, 2023. Photo: City Police Department The stone that fell on the American house is 15 cm high and 10 cm wide and weighs 0.9 kg. It crashed into the house, denting the floorboards, punching two holes in the ceiling and was still warm when local resident Susie Cope discovered it in her father’s bedroom. After rescuers cleared the house of any harmful radioactive residue, the homeowners turned the space rock over to a local college for further testing. Researchers have found that the stone has existed since the beginning of our solar system and is a fragment left over from its creation. The meteorite is planned to be named Titusville, New Jersey: the mailing address closest to where it landed. “The rock is in excellent condition and is one of very few such chondrite falls known to science,” Magee said. The upper layer of the meteorite has a blackened crust several millimeters thick from partial combustion in the Earth’s atmosphere. Using a hand-held lens designed to closely examine the rocks, the team of physicists discovered that the meteorite’s minerals are blue and gray in color with a small amount of other metals mixed in. Researchers from the College of New Jersey confirmed that this stone is a meteorite 4.6 billion years old. Photo: The College of New Jersey The team also studied the texture and composition of the rock by placing it in the large chamber of a scanning electron microscope. According to preliminary estimates, the meteorite is an LL-6 class chondrite, which contains less iron than other members of its family and is at least 30-40% denser than the most common rocks on Earth, such as schist or granite. “So it was clear that it was not an earth stone,” Magee said. Even before the space rock disturbed the Earth’s atmosphere, it was subjected to intense heating in outer space, which greatly changed its structure and composition. We will remind, on April 19 in Kyiv, the townspeople saw a bright flash in the sky, which was the result of a falling meteorite. Read also: Scientists have found out how meteorites from Mars reach the Earth
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