A sharp crash that sounds like glass shattering or ice cracking has been documented as likely the world’s first audio recording of a meteorite crash. It came by chance from a doorbell camera, recorded last July near the front steps of a home in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island.
Homeowner Joe Velaidum had returned from a walk when he noticed the chalky mark of what we now know to be a meteorite impact on his front walkway. “The shocking thing for me is that I was standing right there a couple of minutes right before this impact,” Velaidum told CBC News.
The University of Alberta’s meteorite collection curator, Chris Herd, who happened to have a vacation on the island already scheduled, got a call to investigate. “It’s not anything we’ve ever heard before,” Herd told CBC News, in the same story. “From a science perspective, it’s new.”
About 95 grams of meteorite bits were gathered from the site, and Herd received around seven grams of samples to study back at the university. Analysis found the samples were ordinary chondrites, the most common type of stony meteorite found on Earth, accounting for about 86 percent of all space rocks recovered.
After entering through the atmosphere, Herd told CBC News, the meteorite traveled at terminal velocity — about the same speed as a rock dropped from an airplane, before landing in the small community of Marshfield. The official name for the meteorite is the Charlottetown Meteorite, after the island’s Capital city, which is located just east of Masefield.
“It’s actually the first and only meteorite ever found on the Island, and what a way to make that discovery,” Herd said.
“Every time that this happens, it’s a new sample from space. It’s from the asteroid belt […] between Mars and Jupiter, so it’s come a long way.”
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