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It was a simple, sunny afternoon on Prince Edward Island, Canada, when Joe Validem and his partner, Laura Kelly, set out to walk their dog. Spotting a stray leash in the yard, Validom stopped to pick it up before taking a brisk walk.
Minutes later, a meteor pummeled the walkway — right where Validem was standing — and a ring doorbell camera captured the entire event on video.
“I would never stop at that spot. Two minutes more, I would have been absolutely hit by that meteorite and probably killed,” Validem told CNN of the July 2024 event.
Months later, after undergoing laboratory analysis that confirmed that it was in fact a rock that fell from space, the object was officially identified as Catalogue In a database maintained by the nonprofit Metrological Society.
The specimen — dubbed “Charlotte Town” after a nearby city — is notable for its accompanying video, which was filmed by the University of Alberta. Continued Although the footage of the doorbell isn’t the first to show its arrival, it’s notable because the event was so close and recorded, according to Dr. Chris Heard, professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta last week. was caught along. In Canada
Ring camera footage shows a meteor falling near a house in Canada.
“The Charlottetown meteorite certainly made an announcement in a spectacular way,” Heard, who collected the sample and curated the University of Alberta’s meteorite collection, told CNN.
“No other meteorite fall like this has been documented, complete with sound,” he said.
Even in Heard’s work, events like meteor strikes in Prince Edward Island — Canada’s smallest province just north of Nova Scotia — almost never come up.
The University of Alberta’s online meteorite reporting system receives about 10 submissions a week. But “.1% or less of the inquiries that actually come in are meteorites,” Hurd said.
University professor Walidham himself did not readily accept the possibility that the object that crashed into his front yard was actually extraterrestrial. More likely, he guessed, it had fallen from a plane or from the roof.
“The rational part of my brain just said, ‘No, it’s a lot more unusual than a meteor, right?'” Validem said.
Initially, he said, the couple began sweeping dirt from the sidewalk.
It was Kelly’s father, who lives nearby, who asked the couple to remove some samples for further examination. Using a vacuum and a magnet — which can attract metals found in meteorites — they collected a 95-gram (3-ounce) sample.
When a quick online search turned up the University of Alberta’s meteorite collection, the couple reached out, sending in some photos.
Hurd said he knew immediately he had a real space rock.
“I have expertise in that I’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands, of these types of images,” Hurd said, noting that the meteorites are encased in a dark shell that forms when space rocks 45,000 As they travel further, they react with the Earth’s dense atmosphere. miles (72,420 km) per hour.
What makes the event even more special, Hurd said, is that a camera captured the moment of impact — a remarkable sighting not only because it confirms the meteor’s arrival, but also because That footage can benefit science.
“We’re working on analyzing the video to see if we can tell more about the meteorite impact — including speed,” Heard said. “We might be able to analyze the sound, for example, to say something about the physical properties of the rock.”
Heard and Validem also pointed out the strange coincidences associated with the arrival of meteors.
First and perhaps most thought-provoking, Validum would have been hit by the object had it arrived minutes earlier.
It was the first confirmed meteorite strike in the history of the 2,200-square-mile (5,700-square-kilometer) Prince Edward Island.
And Heard had planned a family vacation on the island about 10 days after the incident, so he was able to get the sample in person.
“It’s crazy. This story is full of all kinds of things like that — insensitivity,” Hurd said.
Validem added that he teaches a religious studies course at the University of Prince Edward Island on “The Meaning of Life,” which includes a discussion of the vastness and power of the vast universe.
“We have a part of the course that deals with the vastness of space and how extraordinary our existence seems when considered against that background,” Validem said, “which is another strange coincidence.”
The type of space rock that hits his property, however, is not all that rare. It is classified as a “typical chondrite” – called “common” because it is common as far as meteorites go.
But its origin is no less fascinating: “We’re fairly certain in the scientific community that these types of meteorites come from broken pieces of asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter,” Hurd said.
“This fragment that arrived at Earth last July 25 at 5:02 p.m. … may have been in space for millions or tens of millions of years before that,” he added.
Today, the Charlottetown Meteorite is part of the University of Alberta’s Meteorite Collection, which houses more than 1,800 specimens – the largest of its kind in Canada.
Heard, curator of the collection, said members of the public hoping to spot a suspected meteorite should keep in mind that some terrestrial objects are often mistaken for space rocks.
Slag, for example, is the stony black substance that is discarded as a byproduct of smelting or refining ore. But the slag often has visible bubbles — and “bubbles are rare in meteorites.”
What’s valuable and interesting about sorting out “meteorrongs,” as the scientific community jokingly refers to them, from meteorites is the information about our universe that these space rocks can offer.
“Everything on Earth is new because of geology and active processes (on the surface of our home planet),” Hurd said. “There are no rocks of this age — 4.5 billion years old — that are preserved on Earth.”
