'Possible' Meteorite Crashes Into a New Jersey Home. 'It Penetrated the Roof.' The Hopewell Township police department is investigating the mysterious metallic object.

By Jonathan Small

A family in New Jersey is lucky to have dodged a possible meteorite.

On Monday, an unidentified metallic object struck their roof, went through the ceiling, and bounced around before landing on a hardwood floor. The residents were home at the time of impact, but nobody was injured.

Resident Suzy Kop says she found the object in her father's room "still warm."

"I thank God that my father was not here, no one was here, we weren't hurt or anything," Kop told CBS News KYW-TV

Police in Hopewell Township posted photos of the rock on Facebook, describing it as 4" 6," oblong in shape, and metallic.

Possible connection to a meteor shower

If the object is a meteorite, it's likely part of the Eta Aquariids meteor shower, which began in mid-April and ends around May 27.

Derrick Pitts, the chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, told KYW-TV that the mysterious rock could be four to five billion years old.

"It's been running around in space all that time and now it's come to Earth and fell in their laps," Pitts said. "For it to actually strike a house, for people to be able to pick up, that's really unusual and has happened very few times in history."

Related: A Museum Is Offering $25,000 to Find the Meteorite That Just Struck Earth

Kop says the unusualness of the situation was not lost on all involved. When the police arrived, they didn't quite know what to do.

"They were afraid that, you know because it fell from the sky, was it radioactive? Could we have a type of residue on us? So they scanned us and everything came back clear," she said.

The incident is still under investigation.

Wavy Line
Jonathan Small

Entrepreneur Staff

Editor in Chief of Green Entrepreneur

Jonathan Small is editor-in-chief of Green Entrepreneur, a vertical from Entrepreneur Media focused on the intersection of sustainability and business. He is also an award-winning journalist, producer, and podcast host of the upcoming True Crime series, Dirty Money, and Write About Now podcasts. Jonathan is the founder of Strike Fire Productions, a premium podcast production company. He had held editing positions at Glamour, Stuff, Fitness, and Twist Magazines. His stories have appeared in The New York Times, TV Guide, Cosmo, Details, and Good Housekeeping. Previously, Jonathan served as VP of Content for the GSN (the Game Show Network), where he produced original digital video series.

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