Meteorite hunters scour Ohio for fragments of 7-ton space rock that crashed into Earth

MEDINA, Ohio — Meteor hunters fanned out across a wide swath of Ohio on Thursday, hoping to collect fragments of an estimated 7-ton (6,350-kilogram) space rock that crashed to Earth this week after a dazzling fireball seen hundreds of miles away.

The meteoroid broke up around 9 a.m. Tuesday over Valley City, a half-hour south of Cleveland, after traveling through the atmosphere at about 45,000 miles (72,420 kilometers) per hour. This caused a supersonic boom that shook buildings and sparked fears of an explosion. The fireball was observed from Wisconsin to Maryland and NASA confirmed it was a meteoroid nearly 6 feet in diameter.

December Medina resident Harris didn’t have to go looking: Her cousin and roommate, Ambra Sinclair, found a small black rock she suspected was a meteorite while she was leaving for work. They had heard the supersonic boom Tuesday morning, but thought it might have been noise from a nearby airport.

Harris said her roommate found the rock in a 4-foot area between the garage and the house late Wednesday morning. She described it as somewhat triangular in shape, less than 5 centimeters in diameter – and “very, very black,” with pits on the surface, grooves and a molten texture on the exterior.

Meteoroids are traveling at very high speeds when they suddenly collide with gases covering the Earth, causing enormous stress as they compress the air in front of them. This heats the rock which melts and breaks.

The sight of the black rock stood out to Harris.

“I have a cleaned driveway,” said Harris, 70, a retired business owner. “There’s nothing like it around here.”

She had heard that she should avoid touching a meteorite with her bare hands, so they picked it up with a towel and placed it in a jar. She is now looking for a way to authenticate it: no one answered the NASA phone number she called seven times.

“For us, my cousin and I, we have a strong faith in God,” Harris said. “We’re like, ‘God just knocked him out of the sky. » »

After learning about meteor sightings, meteorite collector and dealer Roberto Vargas hit the road, driving for hours from his home in Bristol, Connecticut, to Ohio.

He drove through the night and began his search shortly after sunrise Wednesday. Sunset was almost over before he got lucky and came across a suspected meteorite. By midday Thursday, he located a second piece, which he said is “100 percent fusion crust,” a museum-quality specimen that he plans to preserve.

Enough to make the 40-year-old former mental health therapist poetic.

“It was a major event – ​​the shock waves, the sonic booms,” he said, taking a break from his research to conduct a telephone interview. “It’s an autumn beauty.”

In nearly a decade of collecting, Vargas had found only about 20 meteorites in nature. He is among the hunters who speculate there could be a much larger piece — perhaps 20 pounds (9 kilograms) or more.

Vargas said there are a mix of variables that will factor into how long he stays in the area.

“It depends on how many stones are found,” he said. “Are we still finding them? And what’s the situation with huntable land. There’s a lot of private property around here.”

Gabe Leidy thought maybe something had hit his house in North Ridgeville when he heard the boom, then went looking for parts after work Wednesday afternoon.

The 39-year-old who works in supply chain management traveled to the Sharon Center area, where he thought a black space rock might stand out. That’s when he discovered “something that looks a lot like a meteorite.”

Some have already offered him hundreds, even thousands of dollars, but Leidy wants to hang on. For now, it’s in a closet, but he imagines that one day it might end up in a museum.

“My goal here was simply to find a souvenir with which I could remember this probably unique event,” he said.

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Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.