July 24, 2005
The universe has spent billions of years making things that shine. On your birthday, we celebrate one of its quieter masterpieces.
A Chicago Meteorite Fall
Birthday · July 24, 2005
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APOD published July 24, 2005. Credit: Ivan and Colby Navarro. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
If you wait long enough, a piece of outer space itself will come right to you. As Colby Navarro worked innocently on the computer, a rock from space crashed through the roof, struck the printer, banged off the wall, and came to rest near the filing cabinet. This occurred around midnight on March 26, 2003 in Park Forest, Illinois, USA, near Chicago. The meteorite, measuring about 10 cm across, was one of several that fell near Chicago that day as part of a tremendous fireball. Pictured above is the resulting hole in the ceiling, while the inset image shows the wall dent and the meteorite itself. Although the vast majority of meteors is much smaller and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, the average homeowner should expect to repair direct meteor damage every hundred million years.
Image credit: Ivan and Colby Navarro