Edmonton resident Doug Olson had an unexpected visitor from outer space this year when a meteorite landed on his roof.
“I was just folding laundry and there was a loud bang on the roof,” Mr. Olson said in a retelling of the October 2022 incident in a video published Dec. 1 by the University of Alberta.
His first thought was that someone was shooting at his home but, when he went outside to investigate, he couldn’t find anything unusual. It wasn’t until he decided to clean out his gutters this past spring that he found a small metallic-looking grey and black stone in the eavestrough of his house. He suspected it was not of this world.
After taking it to Chris Herd of the University of Alberta’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, it was confirmed that the stone was indeed from outer space.
“We removed a piece of it and he kept the rest,“ Mr. Herd said in the video. ”You can see flecks of metal which are characteristic of this type of meteorite.”
Named “Menisa” after the name of the neighbourhood where it was found, the meteorite will soon be on display as a part of the University of Alberta’s meteorite collection which houses more than 2,000 specimens. Approximately the size of a pebble and weighing just 33 grams, the meteorite is composed of iron and nickel as well as a grey substance called chondrule, a material typically found in stony meteorites.Mr. Olson’s experience is the first witnessed fall of a meteorite in Alberta since 1977 and one of only 18 ever found in the province, the university said. There have been only 67 meteorites found in all of Canada.
Meteorites are rocks from space, possibly as old as the solar system, that survive entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Usually magnetic, they are often heavier than other rocks. They also usually have an unusual shape with unusual pits in their surface called “regmaglypts.”
The University of Alberta receives hundreds of emails each year from people purporting to have found a meteorite, Mr. Herd said, adding that 99.9 percent of claims prove to be false.
Alberta, because it is in the north and has an abundance of clear skies and vast open spaces, is an ideal spot to find meteorites, Mr. Herd said.
“It sort of increases the chances of meteorites being found on the ground on open fields,” he said. “There have been cases where farmers have found them in their fields.”
Called the “meteorite guy” at the local coffee shop, this isn’t Mr. Olson’s first meteorite experience. He said he found in Fort McMurray what he believes to be another meteorite several years ago.
According to Mr. Herd, bits and pieces of asteroids often fall from space, though a meteorite such as Menisa is rare. “It’s just luck that it happened in this way,” he said.
