Museum investigates meteorite claims

Glenn Cordingley
From: PerthNow
March 05, 2010 2:58PM
SOURCE: http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/special-features/museum-investigates-meteorite-claims/story-e6frg1ac-1225837470139

WA Museum curators will investigate claims a meteorite crashed into a home of a north-eastern suburb in Perth.

A museum spokesman said a woman had claimed a meteorite hit her Beechboro home last night.

“All we know is a house has been hit by a suspected meteorite but we have not had a chance to verify this,” a museum spokesman said.

“We are trying to get it over to the museum for one of our scientists to have a look at but at this stage we do not know if it’s a rock or a meteorite.”

Perth Observatory said it had received a “couple of reports” last night from people phoning to say they had seen a light in the sky.

“At this stage no one seems to be able to put it all together, but if it was a meteor it belongs to the WA Government, observatory astronomer Ralph Martyn said.

“The reports at this stage are very sketchy.”

He said the observatory was waiting to inspect a photograph of the object.

“A lot of people find slag out of glass furnaces and think they are meteorites as well, they kind of look the same.”


UPDATE: Museum investigation: 'Probably a rock, not meteorite'

Glenn Cordingley
From: PerthNow
March 06, 2010

SCIENTISTS investigating claims a meteor fragment the size of a cricket ball collided into a WA house have confirmed it was almost certainly a rock.

The object hit the roof of the home about 4pm on Thursday in the north-eastern Perth suburb of Beechboro.

A female occupant thought it was a meteor.

The WA Museum today said the object may have fallen from a plane lowering its landing gear.

The museum’s head of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Dr Alex Bevan, yesterday inspected the object, which he did not suspect was from outer space.

“Alex did have a look at some photos of the object, but when he did look at it in person, he did not think it was from a meteorite,” a museum spokesperson said.br

“Sometimes rocks get caught in the wheels of planes and as they are lowering their gear they may fall, we just don’t know.”