Joe Velaidum can’t help but wonder what might have happened if he had stayed outside his front door just a couple more minutes before taking his dogs for a walk.
The timing of his departure that day last July turned out to be fortunate. A few seconds later, a meteorite would plummet onto the main walkway of Velaidum’s home in Marshfield, Prince Edward Island, shattering on impact with a reverberating crash.
“The surprising thing to me is that I was standing there a couple of minutes before this impact,” Velaidum told CBC Information.
“If I had seen it, I probably would have been standing there, so I probably would have been torn in half.”
An island owner has captured what is believed to be a first: the sight and sound of a meteorite hitting land. CBC Information: Compass host Louise Martin talks to Chris Herd, curator of the University of Alberta’s meteorite collection, about this rare rock discovery.
Even luckier, his home security camera captured both video and audio of the meteorite’s crash landing.
Scientists believe it could be the first time both the sound and images of a meteorite impact have been recorded.
“It’s not something we’ve heard before. From a scientific perspective, it’s new,” said Chris Herd, curator of the meteorite collection at the University of Alberta. CBC News: Compass presenter Luisa Martín.
“Since then we have been able to investigate the meteorite thanks to its owners.”
The Charlottetown Meteorite
When Velaidum returned home from his walk and discovered unusual dark debris all over the path and grass, he reviewed the camera footage and was shocked to see the mini explosion that took place in the exact spot where he had been before.
A friend warned him that the object could have been a meteorite, so he began collecting samples of the debris.
Some of those samples, about seven grams, were sent to Herd in Edmonton.
“By examining photographs of the fragments, Herd confirmed that the discovery was, in fact, a meteorite. By chance, I had planned a family trip to Prince Edward Island just 10 days after the fall; The trip now included a detour to check the space where the meteorite fell,” reads a news release sent Monday by the University of Alberta.
Between Velaidum and Herd, a total of about 95 grams of fragments were collected from the accident site.
The analyzes confirmed that the samples come from an ordinary chondrite, the most common type of space rock that hits this planet.
Fittingly, the specimen has been named the Charlottetown Meteorite: Marshfield is located just east of PEI’s capital.
Herd said meteorites typically enter the atmosphere traveling at around 60,000 km/h before slowing to terminal velocity. He said the rock that hit Velaidum’s house was probably traveling at least 200 km/h when it made impact.
Scientists can sometimes observe a meteorite heating up into a “fireball” as it enters the atmosphere, Herd said, leaving behind physical evidence and damage when it hits a structure.
It comes from the asteroid belt… between Mars and Jupiter, so it has come a long way.–Chris Herd, University of Alberta
But as far as his research has discovered, audio of such a collision with a man-made object has never been recorded.
“It’s really amazing. In fact, it is the first and only meteorite ever found on the island, and what a way to make that discovery,” Herd said. “Every time this happens, it is a new sample of space. “It’s from the asteroid belt… between Mars and Jupiter, so it’s come a long way.”
For Velaidum, aside from counting his luck that the sky didn’t literally fall on his head, thinking about the odds of a meteorite traveling so far just to land on his doorstep is mind-boggling.
“How do you interpret that, except… with awe and wonder?”
