In June of 2025, a meteorite crashed into the roof of a home near Atlanta, and when geologists checked it out, they found it to be more than four and a half billion years old, which is 20 million years older than planet Earth.
They called it the McDonough Meteorite
Researchers at the University of Georgia have said they believe the rock from space predates Earth.
They’ve dubbed it the McDonough Meteorite as a nod to the city of Henry County, where it fell into a man’s home on June 26 this year.
The researchers checked it out
UGA Geology Department researcher, Scott Harris, said in a news release on Friday, August 8, “This particular meteor that entered the atmosphere has a long history before it made it to the ground of McDonough.”
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They determine the age by analyzing the rock
“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,” Harris added.
Researchers say that, although the Earth’s atmosphere slows them down, meteorites can travel faster than the speed of sound when they’re entering it.
The atmosphere slows meteorites down
Harris explained, “When they encounter Earth, our atmosphere is very good at slowing them down.”
“But you’re talking about something that is double the size of a 50-caliber shell, going at least 1 kilometer per second. That’s like running 10 football fields in one second.”
The meteorite sounded like a ‘gunshot’
Researchers added that the McDonough Meteorite sounded like a ‘close-range gunshot’ upon its landing on the roof of the house.
As it fell, it chased through the roof and the house’s HVAC before denting the floor. The man living in the house is even still finding bits of space dust in his living room.
Harris spoke about the sound
“I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things. One was the collision with his roof, one was a tiny cone of a sonic boom and a third was it impacting the floor all in the same moment,” Harris explained.
“There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments.”
They were given 23 grams of it to research
University researchers were able to determine the age of the meteorite after analyzing the 23 grams of it that they were given. A total of 50 grams of the meteorite had fallen into the man’s house.
They identified it as a low-metal ordinary chondrite, which likely formed around 4.56 billion years ago.
The Earth is younger than this
In comparison the Earth, which is only 4.54 billion years old, the meteorite is 20 million years older.
“It belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago,” Harrison said.
Harrison explained how it came to Earth
“But in that breakup, some pieces get into Earth-crossing orbits, and if given long enough, their orbit around the sun and Earth’s orbit around the sun end up being at the same place, at the same moment in time,” Harrison added.
