The rock that punched a Georgia roof now has a name and a backstory. The name they have chosen is the McDonough Meteorite. UGA scientists say the McDonough Meteorite is older than Earth, and they can show their work.
🛰️ Why It Matters: Space rocks are receipts from the start of the solar system. When one lands in your neighborhood, the lab notes aren’t trivia. They tell us where we came from and what’s floating over our heads.
🔬 What’s New: University of Georgia researchers have analyzed and named the McDonough Meteorite, the same object that lit up the Southeast sky in June and left a hole in a Henry County roof.
- UGA says 23 grams of fragments were recovered and turned over to a planetary geologist for origin and classification.
- The team is working with Arizona State University to submit the name and findings to the Meteoritical Society’s Nomenclature Committee, the group that keeps the global ledger of meteorites.
🧩 What They Found: This is ancient stuff. Laboratory analysis dates the material to about 4.56 billion years ago, which makes it older than the planet it hit.
- Before breakup, observers tracked the fireball at high speed as it entered the atmosphere. In plain talk: a fast, bright bolide on a beeline for McDonough.
- By the time it reached the house, it had slowed and shrunk. Even so, a cherry-tomato-sized rock can still punch through a roof, clip an air duct, and thump a floor hard enough to sound like a close-range gunshot.
🌠 Catch Up Quick: On June 26, a daytime fireball streaked across the Southeast, drawing eyes and cameras. Pieces later turned up in Henry County, south of Atlanta. Those are the fragments now labeled McDonough Meteorite.
🧷 The Sources
- University of Georgia,
- Meteoritical Society
- Arizona State University, Center for Meteorite Studies
Before You Dismiss This Article…
We live in a time when information feels overwhelming, but here’s what hasn’t changed: facts exist whether they comfort us or not.
When A&W launched their third-pound burger to compete with McDonald’s Quarter Pounder in the 1980s, it failed spectacularly. Not because it tasted worse, but because customers thought 1/3 was smaller than 1/4. If basic math can trip us up, imagine how easily we can misread complex news.
The press isn’t against you when it reports something you don’t want to hear. Reporters are thermometers, not the fever itself. They’re telling you what verified sources are saying, not taking sides. Good reporting should challenge you — that’s literally the job.
Next time a story makes you angry, pause. Ask yourself: What evidence backs this up? Am I reacting with my brain or my gut? What would actually change my mind? And most importantly, am I assuming bias just because the story doesn’t match what I hoped to hear.
Smart readers choose verified information over their own comfort zone.
B.T. Clark
B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.
