Toronto, October 17: What was believed to be an act of vandalism in a small Canadian town has actually turned out to be an act of a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite.
The rocks from this meteorite smashed the windowshield of a truck in Grimsby near Niagara Falls on the night of Sep 25.
Thinking that it was an act of vandalism committed with some ‘unusual rocks’, the truck owners – Tony Garchinski and his mother Yvonne Garchinski – reported the matter to police.
But these ‘unusual rocks’ turned to be visitors from space, astronomers at the University of Western Ontario said Friday.
They said when the truck window shield was being smashed Sep 25, they were capturing footage of a “fireball” 100 times brighter than a moon streaking across the sky.
To collect its pieces, they said, the university asked people around the town to recover any pieces.
When Tony and his mother read reports that researchers were seeking possible fragments of the meteorite, they phoned the university.
When university researcher Phil McCausland came and inspected the rock piece, they were shocked when he told them that it was 4.6 billion years old and came from the meteorite that they had captured on video two weeks ago.
“It was pretty shocking…knowing that we have a piece of outer space,” said Tony Garchinski.
–Agencies