[meteorite-list] North Carolina IMPACT meteor-wrong

From: John Sinclair <jsinclairjr_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:32:49 2004
Message-ID: <000b01c4084b$a14c0620$2101a8c0_at_sinclair>

Mystery object hits home
Sean Olson , STAFF WRITER 03/11/2004
High Point Enterprise

No one was home when the object hit Joanie Stumpf's Westgate Drive home in
north High Point.

Sometime between 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, a metal, egg-shaped object
fell from the sky, pierced Stumpf's roof and ceiling, smashed a dent into
her hardwood floor and ricocheted more than six feet, breaking a candle
holder on the nearby entertainment center.

"My daughter is the one who found it when she came home from school at about
2:30," Stumpf said. "She said something fell onto the roof, and I thought it
was a tree and came right home."

Given the circumstances, Stumpf and others thought it could be a piece of a
plane, a meteorite or a piece of space garbage that's fallen to earth after
orbiting the planet's atmosphere.

"Objects can fall from space," said Tom English, director of the Cline
Observatory at Guilford Technical Community College. "There are thousands of
objects that orbit the earth. As those orbits decay, they can re-enter the
atmosphere. It happens fairly frequently."

It's more likely that the object came from a place closer than a galaxy far,
far away. While it may have been tempting or exciting to think of the object
as a meteorite or piece of space trash, David Butler, a meteorite collector
and member of the Greensboro Astronomy Club, and Roger Joyner, planetarium
curator at the Greensboro Natural Science Center, went to Stumpf's house to
take a look at the object, and both believe that the object was likely
man-made.

"It looks like it could have some machine heating," Joyner said as he
pointed to small, bluish spots on the object.

"And there are facets or planes where it looks like it's been cut," he
added, pointing to the jagged edges on the surface of the metal.

"I'd say it's certainly man-made," Butler said after looking at the object
under a stereoscope.

Joyner theorizes the metal object could have come off a large, industrial
shredder like those used in the nearby Ingleside Composting Yard. The piece
could have been shot off a piece of their equipment, Joyner thinks.

"This is probably a piece of their equipment," he said. "These striations
look like something a machine makes, and it looks blue from heating. The
more I look at it, the more this looks like it came off of a piece of
machinery."

The facility uses large shredders to mulch trees and other debris into
mulch.

Sean Olson can be contacted
at 888-3627 or solson_at_hpe.com

İHigh Point Enterprise 2004
Received on Fri 12 Mar 2004 11:03:56 AM PST