A fireball seen streaking across Georgia in June has been identified as a fragment of a 4.5 billion-year-old meteor after crashing through a homeowner’s ceiling.
Environmental portrait of researcher Scott Harris of the Geology Department as he holds a fragment from a meteorite at the Geography Geology Building. The fragment is from a meteorite that fell through the roof of a home in McDonough, Ga. Credit: University of Georgia, Division of Marketing & Communications
A rock that crashed through the roof of a Georgia home this summer has a story to tell, and it begins long before the existence of our planet. Scientists at the University of Georgia (UGA) who studied fragments of the object determined it is approximately 4.56 billion years old, making it about 20 million years older than Earth. The extraterrestrial visitor has been officially named the McDonough Meteorite.
According to media reports from June 26, the story began that day when a fireball blazed across the sky, visible to residents in Georgia and South Carolina, accumulating lots of social media attention. CBS News confirmed that the American Meteor Society had logged more than 160 reports, while NASA stated the meteor was a massive object — three feet in diameter and over 2,000 pounds — that hit the atmosphere at 30,000 miles per hour. It exploded over West Forest, Georgia, sending a sonic boom to the ground below.
The story quickly became personal for one Henry County resident. A WSB-TV report from that evening detailed how the homeowner, who wished to remain anonymous, was startled by a sound like a gunshot.
A fragment of the rock had shot through his roof and HVAC ductwork before embedding itself in the floor. Planetary geologist Scott Harris, who analyzed the meteorite, later explained the dramatic impact in a UGA news release. “I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things. 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,” Harris said. “There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments.”
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In the weeks that followed, as the homeowner continued to find specks of space dust in his living room, scientists at UGA began to piece together the meteorite’s incredible journey by analyzing a 26-gram sample of the rock.
The scientific analysis, detailed in the UGA news release, confirmed the rock is a Low Metal (L) ordinary Chondrite, a stony meteorite that offers a direct window into the early solar system. “This particular meteor that entered the atmosphere has a long history before it made it to the ground of McDonough,” said Harris. That history, he explained, likely began 470 million years ago when a much larger asteroid shattered in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. For eons, this fragment drifted through the void, its path eventually intersecting with Earth’s orbit, leading to its fiery arrival June 26.
Now that its ancient journey is over, the rock begins a new chapter on Earth. Officially named the McDonough Meteorite, it is only the sixth “witnessed fall” recovered in Georgia’s history, making it a rare specimen.
According to Harris, studying such finds is potentially crucial for planetary defense. “One day there will be an opportunity… for something large to hit and create a catastrophic situation. If we can guard against that, we want to,” he stated. To that end, the meteorite’s future is twofold: it will be a subject for further scientific study at UGA, while other pieces will be displayed for the public at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville.
