It's only what?

In the early hours of January 2 2007, the Nageswaran family discovered that it wasn't just fireworks in the neighborhood they had heard but rather something had crashed through the roof and into an upstairs bathroom. Among the chunks of insulation and drywall on the floor rested a metallic looking rock.

Within a few hours of reporting the "home invasion" in Freehold Township NJ, federal aviation agents examined it and ruled that it was not thankfully, the remains of an airline toilet flush nor was it a piece of a plane. The other choices of alien invasion and terroist attack could easily be ruled out as well, which left but one conclusion...... this was a meteorite.

The object, which weighs 377 grams and is about 3 inches by 2 inches in size, was visually examined at the police department by Rutgers University geologist Jeremy Delaney and later by an independent metals expert shortly after it's discovery. Both had concluded that it was a meteorite, one of the approximately 20 to 50 that fall to earth each year. In late April of this year it was brought to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City NY for more testing. After a few hours of examination of the x rays generated with a variable-pressure scanning electron microscope, the elements and composition of the object were revealed.

The object may resemble a rock but it is a stainless steel alloy that doesn't occur naturally in nature. The little golfball sized invader is most likely "orbital debris", the remnents of a rocket, satellite or some other random spacecraft component. What punched a hole into an upscale neighborhood bathroom and briefly enjoyed the spotlight as a rare space rock is instead, just a rather ordinary piece of space junk.

"I'm happy it didn't hit my house." Robert Nalven

All these years after the first steps on the moon, we still get excited to find a little piece of space that has survived the journey to earth. This time though, it appears that a spare wrench may have fallen out of the Millineum Falcon, blazed it's way through the atmosphere and is now destined to be a unique paperweight.