Metallic Object Believed To Be Meteorite Smashed Into a House in New Jersey

An object smashed into a house in New Jersey Monday afternoon. Local police said no one was harmed after the collision.

Metallic Object Believed to Be Meteorite Crashes Through Roof

The Hopewell Township Police Department said in a statement that a metallic object around four by 6 inches hit the roof of one residence, and it halted on the floor. The residents were inside their homes when it happened, but no injuries were reported.

Louis Vastola, an operations lieutenant at the Hopewell Township Police Department, told Newsweek that they would meet with an astrophysicist and the residents involved about the object which will be tested. They haven't tested the object yet but reportedly received many calls suggesting that the metallic object was a meteorite.

The outlet noted that it's normal for meteors to fall to Earth as they do regularly. Hundreds of meteors fall on the planet annually and come in different shapes and sizes.

According to Jonti Horner, an astrophysics professor at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, as a meteorite enters Earth's atmosphere at an extremely fast speed (above 12 kilometers [7.5 miles] per second), it pushes the air in front of it, causing that air to become superheated (kind of like a shockwave), which in turn causes the surface of the rock to ablate. Essentially, the very surface layer gets superheated and vaporizes.

The ablation process whittles the object away from the inside out as it continues to push through the environment until friction with the atmosphere causes it to slow to subsonic speeds.

Most of the time, these space rocks burn up completely as they fall to Earth, but on rare occasions, some manage to survive the trip and hit the ground.

The initial asteroid is expected to maintain the majority of its speed and survive passage through the atmosphere when it is quite huge, measuring more than 50 to 100 meters (164 to 328 feet), according to Annemarie E. Pickersgill, a meteorite-impact scientist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

ALSO READ: Massive Asteroid About the Size of 69 American Alligators Will Pass by Earth Tuesday, NASA Warns

What Are Meteorites?

Meteorites are space rocks that hit the Earth's surface. They are pieces of spatial matter that crash on a planet's surface. The majority of them came from Asteroid Belt, according to National Geographic.

A meteorite is the final stage of the evolution of these kinds of space rocks. Space rocks started from meteoroids and turned into meteors before they became meteorites, which is the final stage of their existence.

Rock or metal chunks orbiting the sun are called meteoroids. They become meteors when they enter the Earth's atmosphere. The gases surrounding them gave them a brief light, which prompted many to call them "shooting stars." When the meteors reach Earth's surface, they are called meteorites.

NASA shared the same description, noting that meteors, meteoroids, and meteorites are all related to the flashes of light called "shooting stars." For a simpler understanding, they are called meteoroids when they are still in space.

They become meteors when they enter the Earth's atmosphere at high speed. At this stage, they can be seen as fireballs or shooting stars. When the object survives and hits the ground, it's called a "meteorite."