A Meteorite Visits the Comettes

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When your last name is Comette, I’m sure the occasional astronomy-themed joke is never far away. But it’s no joke that the Comette family living in Draveil, a suburb south of Paris, was paid a visit by a real extraterrestrial a couple of weeks ago – in the form of an 88-gram (3.5 oz.) meteorite that broke through their roof!

The Comettes were on vacation at the time, so didn’t realize their house had been struck by a space rock until they noticed a leak in the roof. When they called in a roofer it was discovered that a thick tile had been completely broken through.

The meteorite was found wedged in insulation.

Mineral scientist Alain Carion investigated the meteorite and determined that it’s an iron-rich chondrite, a 4.57-billion-year-old remnant of the early Solar System that most likely came from the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. About 3/4 of all meteorites that have been observed landing on Earth are chondrites.

While obviously not impossible, the odds of your home being hit my a meteorite are incredibly slim. Only 145 meteorites have been documented landing in the US in the past 200 years. On March 26, 2003, just before midnight, hundreds of fragments of a large meteorite fell in the Park Forest area of Chicago. Several fell through roofs of houses and one punched a hole in the roof of the fire station. One large piece weighing about 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) crashed into a bedroom, narrowly missing a boy who was asleep in his bed! On September 23, 2003, a 20 kg (44 lb) stone meteorite tore straight through a two-storey house in New Orleans and came to rest in the basement. (Source: University of New Mexico Institute of Meteoritics.)

Only about 50 meteorites have been found in France over the past four centuries, and none has ever before been discovered less than 80 km (50 miles) from Paris.

While they could attempt to sell the meteorite that struck their home, possibly fetching several hundred euros for it, the Comettes have decided to keep their otherworldly visitor.

“A piece of the history of space of which we know nothing, but which is fascinating, has fallen on us,” Mrs. Comette told the Le Parisien newspaper. “It’s like a fairytale, and less likely than winning the lottery, we’re told.”

Read more on The Guardian or on The Local.

Image found on Stargazers Lounge.

9 Replies to “A Meteorite Visits the Comettes”

  1. WOW! What are the odds? Regardless… what a great conversation piece for the coffee table! I want one too!

  2. …I guess “welcome home” would have been entirely unoriginal…although the boy in 2003 probably would have preferred a wake-up that wasn’t quite so alarming.

  3. this is the funniest story I have read in a long time… wishing there were more stories like this to ponder on.

  4. When in school many many moons ago, our Science teach gave us magnets to hang outside and collect particles with, magnetic one’s that is. Then towards the end of the year we got to observe them under the Microscope. He claimed some were micrometeorites, but don’t remember much more about it accept these things lead to my drive to be an astronomy buff. I could only dream of finding one in my roof. kudo’s

    1. I like to fish.. and spend way too much(?) time out at the coast in pursuit of …>}}}O>… Walking along our rocky coastline I often wonder which of the rocks under foot are actually meteorites? No doubt some of them are – in fact, if you go back far enough in time, ALL of them are!

  5. I tell ya man it’s 2012 space junk coming down at a accelerated rate, communication satellites turning away from earth. Sun Burst, Gravity Waves Fluctuations,Tectonic Plates Shifting and stuff like dat der.

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