CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A mysterious object, which seemingly fell from the sky, broke a window at WCNC Charlotte Thursday and prompted a still-unsolved mystery: Is this a meteorite?
Amanda Mullen, an employee of WCNC Charlotte's parent company Tegna, was at her desk Thursday when she learned the mysterious object had smashed the rear passenger window of her parked car.
"Maybe space junk? I mean, it came from the sky. I don't know how it got here," Mullen explained. "But just the trajectory of it and judging from the cameras, it came from the sky."
A review of surveillance camera footage showed the object appearing and smashing the window. There was no explanation in the video.
Mullen found the object on the floor of her car. The object is the size of a baseball. It is metallic and magnetic.
So is it a meteorite?
"Not everything that falls from the sky is a meteorite," explained NASA Ambassador Tony Rice.
Rice, who viewed pictures and videos of the object from his office in Raleigh, couldn't positively identify the object. He's skeptical that it's a meteorite because the object was so rough and textured.
"Think about what the environment is like when a rock would be coming into the atmosphere," Rice said. "It's going to melt the outside of that object and create kind of a smooth... crust to it. It'll even look like the shell of an egg."
WCNC Charlotte also took the photos and videos to The Schiele Museum of Natural History and Planetarium in Gastonia.
"Because WCNC is so close to Charlotte Douglas Airport, maybe this was in the wheel or something [of an aircraft]," Candice Jordan of the Schiele Museum explained.
WCNC Charlotte reviewed flight tracking data and did find American Airlines flight 5236, traveling from Greer, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, did fly over the television station around the same time.
However, an American Airlines spokesperson told WCNC Charlotte the crew of that flight did not report any known issues. The spokesperson speculated it could be a meteorite.
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Back to square one
"I've been interested in space my whole life. So to have something like this happen, I'm like: Alright, I got a good story out of it if nothing else," Mullen said.
Mullen plans to send her mysterious junk of metal to a lab for further testing.
She has already filed a claim with her insurance company for the window.
On Friday, WCNC staffers found other unidentified objects on the roof of the television station, which is located along Billy Graham Parkway. Like the object found Thursday, these other objects were also heavy and metallics. However, they were a different color and appeared to have rusted, a process that requires exposure to both oxygen and water.
Mysterious object smashes car window in WCNC parking lot
Checklist to determine if an object is a meteorite
Rice said these are some of the things considered when trying to identify if an object is a meteorite:
- Meteorites are heavy for their size
- Meteorites appear to have a black coating. Rice said this is called a fusion crust and it formed as the meteorite passes through the atmosphere at incredible speed.
- Meteorites are smooth with a featureless surface and only finger-sized divots
- Meteorites are often a non-spherical shape similar to a potato
- MORE: More info from the USGS
If you find an unidentified object, here are at-home tests you can perform to see if it is a meteorite
- Does a refrigerator magnet stick to it? Most meteorites contain iron. However, scrap metal would also be magnetic and not a meteorite.
- If you drag the object over an unglazed ceramic surface such as the back of a tile, does it leave a black or red streak? That's an indicator of magnetite or hematite found in a meteorite.
- Did you see it fall? Less than 5% of confirmed meteorites found also actually witnessed falling.
- MORE: A self-assessment checklist
- MORE: Photos of actual meteorites found on Earth
Rice cautioned:
- Most things that fall from the sky are not meteorites.
- Only about 1,800 meteorites have been found in the United States in the past 200 years.
- Of all the meteorites found on Earth, nearly 2/3 were found in Antarctica, where they show up nicely in the snow. Just over 3% were found in North America.
Contact Jane Monreal at jmonreal@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.