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
How to Read and Understand The News
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- Truth doesn’t change because we dislike it
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Smart news consumers seek truth, not just comfort.
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.
