HENRY COUNTY, Ga. — After a suspected meteor fell in metro Atlanta on Thursday afternoon, people in the area are hoping to find a fragment on the ground.
Channel 2’s Audrey Washington caught up with some meteorite hunters in Henry County who think they might have found something.
“24 hours ago, it was a piece of an asteroid that somehow gravity sent to us,” self-proclaimed meteorite hunter Chris Sanders said. “Now it’s in my hand.”
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Thousands of people reported seeing what looked like a fireball falling in the sky.
NASA later confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that it was likely a meteor going more than 30,000 miles per hour.
Emergency management officials say a meteorite hit a Henry County home, crashing through the roof. Luckily, no one was injured.
Craig Zilmen, a former weather broadcaster, says that because something hit the house, they knew it was likely there were meteorites in the area.
“In this case, it hit a house, so we knew something hit the ground. When that happens, we start searching and we look at radar returns,” he explained.
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Washington held what Zilmen and Sanders believe is a meteorite. She described it as lightweight and looking just like a normal rock to the untrained eye.
“This is broken, so you see the inside of it, and it’s this white color, but the outside is black and shiny and little frothy, and that’s where it burned up. It’s called a fusion crust,” Sanders explained.
Georgia Tech Professor of Aerospace Engineering Dr. Toshi Hirabayashi says that because meteorites are so rare, even small ones are valuable.
“Meteoroids are basically a source of a rare material,” Hirabayashi said. “So when it comes to a rare opportunity to have these minerals, this gives higher prices.”
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