A family in New Jersey is lucky to have dodged a possible meteorite.
On Monday, an unidentified metallic object struck their roof, went through the ceiling, and bounced around before landing on a hardwood floor. The residents were home at the time of impact, but nobody was injured.
Resident Suzy Kop says she found the object in her father’s room “still warm.”
“I thank God that my father was not here, no one was here, we weren’t hurt or anything,” Kop told CBS News KYW-TV
Police in Hopewell Township posted photos of the rock on Facebook, describing it as 4″ 6,” oblong in shape, and metallic.
Possible connection to a meteor shower
If the object is a meteorite, it’s likely part of the Eta Aquariids meteor shower, which began in mid-April and ends around May 27.
Derrick Pitts, the chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, told KYW-TV that the mysterious rock could be four to five billion years old.
“It’s been running around in space all that time and now it’s come to Earth and fell in their laps,” Pitts said. “For it to actually strike a house, for people to be able to pick up, that’s really unusual and has happened very few times in history.”
Related: A Museum Is Offering $25,000 to Find the Meteorite That Just Struck Earth
Kop says the unusualness of the situation was not lost on all involved. When the police arrived, they didn’t quite know what to do.
“They were afraid that, you know because it fell from the sky, was it radioactive? Could we have a type of residue on us? So they scanned us and everything came back clear,” she said.
The incident is still under investigation.
