Geology steps up to identify Georgia meteor

On June 26, a fireball streaked through the daytime sky. After catching eyes across the Southeast US, the extraterrestrial fragments crash landed in Atlanta.

Multiple fragments tore through a residential roof in Henry County, later turned over to a UGA planetary geologist and impact expert to determine their origin and classification:

And it turns out these new chunks are actually quite old.

“This particular meteor that entered the atmosphere has a long history before it made it to the ground of McDonough, ​​and in order to totally understand that, we actually have to examine what the rock is and determine what group of asteroids it belongs to,” said Scott Harris, a researcher in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences’ department of geology.

Although the pieces that fell eventually diminished in size, Harris says it’s useful to consider how the planet might handle a much larger inbound space rock.

Before the meteor broke into analyzable fragments, researchers clocked the bolide (another way to say fireball or bright meteor) entering the atmosphere at cosmic velocity. That’s a massive rock hurtling toward McDonough faster than the speed of sound.

By the time a bolide gets closer to Earth’s surface, it does diminish in speed and size. But a fast traveling rock the size of a cherry tomato is nothing to sneeze at.

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Image: UGA researcher Scott Harris holds a piece of the McDonough Meteorite. (Photo by Andrew Davis Tucker)