HOUSTON – A Houston woman says a rock from space may have crashed straight through her home, leaving behind damage, shock, and what experts believe could be a meteorite.
“It came through the roof, hit the floor, bounced up, and landed right there between the TV and the bed,” said Sherrie James.
James says it all started with a loud noise inside her home. At first, she didn’t know what caused it.
“I thought something fell at first,” James said.
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Moments later, her grandson made a startling discovery.
“He came back into my room and said, ‘Nonny, you’ve got a hole in the ceiling.’ I’m like, what?” James said.
When she walked into her daughter’s bedroom, she says she saw both the damage and something unusual on the floor.
“Then I see the rock on the floor. I’m like, what is that?” James said.
She called the fire department and a constable, who responded to the home.
“The firefighter had it and said, ‘This isn’t a regular rock,’ because it was so heavy,” James said.
James said on Sunday morning, scientists and researchers flooded her home with fascination and offered their analysis.
A professor who studies meteorites also visited and gave an initial assessment.
“He said that, from what he could see, it looked like a meteorite, but I needed to get it tested to verify what kind it was,” James said.
Scientists say events like this are rare.
“There is an organization called the Meteoritical Society that records a database of all the world’s meteorites, and they typically record about a dozen new meteorite falls each year,” said Dr. Marc Fries, a scientist at Johnson Space Center.
Fries creates meteorite fall maps on NASA’s website.
That makes the chances of one hitting a home extremely low.
“You don’t get a very good chance of a fall anywhere in a given year,” he said.
Even after traveling through space and burning through the atmosphere, meteorites can still hit with significant force.
“It was probably moving several hundred miles an hour when it hit, cutting straight through and cleaving its way into the house,” Dr. Fries said.
James says she’s grateful no one was hurt. What started as fear has now turned into fascination.
“It was scary,” James said. “But then it was kind of exciting. No telling where this thing came from.”
Now, she says she plans to sell the rock.
“I do have intentions of selling it,” James said. “I’ve had quite a few offers.”
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