{"id":133269,"date":"2025-08-10T02:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T02:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/133269\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T02:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T02:35:11","slug":"meteorite-fragment-that-slammed-through-homeowners-roof-is-billions-of-years-old-predates-earth-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/133269\/","title":{"rendered":"Meteorite fragment that slammed through homeowner’s roof is billions of years old, predates Earth: professor"},"content":{"rendered":"

A meteorite fragment<\/a> that burst through the roof of a Georgia home last June has been determined to be billions of years old<\/a> and to predate the Earth, according to a geology professor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people saw the fireball,\u201d University of Georgia geologist Scott Harris told Fox News Digital of the meteorite fragment that he said had come from an\u00a0asteroid\u00a0belt between Mars and Jupiter and fell to Earth on June 26 near Atlanta.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said he was immediately alerted to the incident and went to examine what had happened, looking in the attic for the fragment\u2019s point of entry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe homeowner didn\u2019t know that they actually had a clean hole through the roof, through an air duct,\u201d he continued. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey knew about the hole in the roof, but they didn\u2019t know it went through the air duct, through one side of the air duct, out the other side of air duct through a couple of feet of insulation, then through the ceiling, then they had about a 10-foot-high ceiling, kind of a slanted frame ceiling, and then it went the distance from there to the floor and left about a centimeter-and-a-half little crater in the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the meteorite had left a hole in the floor \u201cabout the size of a large cherry tomato.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so this hit hard enough that part of it just absolutely was pulverized like somebody hitting it with a sledgehammer,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Harris said the ancient fragment briefly broke the sound barrier when it entered the Earth\u2019s atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"BrightUniversity of Georgia geology professor Scott Harris determined that a meteorite fragment that crashed through the roof of a home in Georgia last June is billions of years old. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are objects that go back to the original material formed 4.56 billion years ago,\u201d Harris explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, in the days slightly before the\u00a0formation of the planets\u00a0themselves, and at least the rocky interior planets. And, you know, those are the basic building blocks then of our rocky planets and, so that\u2019s one of the reasons that scientists are interested in studying them is it shows us about some of the processes that were active during the early days of the solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Earth<\/a> is believed to be 4.54 billion years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"MeteoriteHarris told Fox News Digital, \u201cA lot of people saw the fireball,\u201d which hit near Atlanta, Georgia, on June 26. William Jackson\/TMX<\/p>\n

Harris explained that while such a small fragment didn\u2019t present a threat to anyone, scientists want to study the dynamics of meteorites falling to Earth because the \u201cultimate goal is to tell you what the risk assessment is for what could be absolute doom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one\u2019s got to do anything about a small object like this coming through the atmosphere, but understanding where these materials come from in the solar system and understanding that even the dynamics of the small pieces are important for ultimately understanding where the bigger ones are and what the risks are for us in the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Scientists studying the dynamics of meteorites can attempt to \u201cengineer ways to avoid collisions with them, most notably by techniques like were demonstrated a few years ago by the DART mission, where we could actually have what\u2019s called a kinetic impacter to go and basically move an asteroid a little bit,\u201d Harris explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you move an asteroids headed toward us, and you move it early enough, then you get it to avoid us all together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A meteorite fragment that burst through the roof of a Georgia home last June has been determined to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[917,4353,6029,16925,159,783,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-133269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-earth","9":"tag-georgia","10":"tag-houses","11":"tag-meteor","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115002142009704238","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}