A FAMILY has received a little gift from above after an object believed to be meteorite fell through their roof.
The roughly potato-sized metallic rock came crashing down on Monday in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, about 15 miles north of Trenton.
6ABCA suspected meteorite came crashing through the roof of a family’s home in New Jersey on Monday[/caption]
APThe object caused some damage as it ricocheted around a bedroom but no one was home when it landed inside the house[/caption]
Nobody was hurt, but Suzy Kop was left with a sizable hole in the roof of her home.
“It appears whatever came from the sky fell through the roof of the top window, that’s my dad’s bedroom,” she told CBS News.
Kop initially thought someone had thrown a rock but quickly realized that wasn’t the case.
After falling through her ceiling, the suspected space rock ricocheted around the bedroom.
Sheetrock and other debris were sent flying before the object came to a rest in a corner.
“I did touch the thing because it thought it was a random rock, I don’t know, and it was warm,” Kop said.
No one was home when it crashed through the roof.
A hazmat team came to ensure that the family hadn’t been exposed to any radioactive material and concluded there was no cause for concern.
Derrick Pitts, the chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, told CBS News that the object could be between four and 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,” he 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.”
NASA told the Daily Mail that anyone who finds a meteorite must report it to the Smithsonian.
“Although meteorites tend to hit Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds, they slow as they travel through the atmosphere, breaking into small fragments before hitting the ground,” NASA said.
“Meteorites cool rapidly and generally are not a risk to the public.”
APThe metallic object believed to be between four and five billion years old is about the size of a potato[/caption]
APIt’s rare for meteorites to strike a home and for people to be able to pick them up, one expert said[/caption]