When Leonids attack!
Just as Laura walked toward the house to get her husband, Tom, a chunk
of rock fell from the sky, slamming down to her left near where she had
been standing just moments before.
via the forteana list.
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 10:24:43 -0000
From: Scott Wood (spam-protected)
To: Forteana (spam-protected) Fort Research List (spam-protected)
Subject: When Leonid’s Attack!
A memento from the sky
Family nearly hit by possible meteorite from Leonid display
BY LU ANN FRANKLIN Times Correspondent
Posted Tuesday, November 20, 2001
http://www.thetimesonline.com/index.pl/article?id=1192720
HIGHLAND — When Laura Yuran and her 11-year-old son, Jonathon, awoke at 4
a.m. Sunday to watch the Leonid meteor shower outside the family’s home in
Highland, they never expected to be a target for space debris.
About a half hour into their sky gazing mother and son began hearing
something that sounded like hail falling. A short time later, those
hail-like objects started pelting the pair. Just as Laura walked toward the
house to get her husband, Tom, a chunk of rock fell from the sky, slamming
down to her left near where she had been standing just moments before.
“It went, ‘Boom!’ and I screamed,” Laura recalled. “Part of it hit the
driveway and the second part was embedded in the ground. I was afraid to
touch it.”
Laura’s scream brought Tom outside. Locating the rocks with a flashlight, he
picked them up, finding them cold to the touch. He had to pull the smaller
stone out of the lawn.
“It’s beautiful,” Laura said of the family’s newest treasure.
Jim Seevers, an astronomer from Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, said the rocks
are most likely meterorites from the Leonid meteor shower. The rust color is
“the fusion crust,” he said, which is typical of a meteorite that has been
seared by the earth’s atmosphere.
“The rock probably chipped off and the shiny, silver they see is the
inside,” Seevers said. “It’s most likely iron and nickel.”
Although Tom Yuran was concerned that the rocks might be radioactive, Seever
said they are basically rocks mixed with metal, such as bits of iron. The
rarest of all meteorites are composed of carbon, another common element in
the universe, and “look like a hunk of charcoal,” Seevers said.
The astronomer said meterorites are slowed down by the earth’s atmosphere
much like a parachute slows down a skydiver. At 60 miles up in the
atmosphere, the rock then begins a fall to earth. Its size and the speed it
is traveling will determine how hard it hits and if it will become embedded
in the Earth.
“If it had hit me, I could have been killed,” Laura Yuran said. “We hid
under the awning on our porch because we were afraid of more rocks falling
down.”
Seevers recommended that the Yurans allow the geology staff at Chicago’s
Field Museum of Natural History to analyze the rock.
“We don’t have a lab here at the Adler Planetarium,” he said. “The staff at
the museum’s meteorite lab will be able to tell them the rock’s
composition.”
On Monday afternoon, the Yurans contacted Dr. Menache Wadhwa, the curator of
the Field Museum’s meteorite collection, for an opinion.
“She wants us to bring her a small piece of it on Wednesday morning. She
said we’re the only ones anywhere who have reported falling meteorites from
the Leonid meteor shower,” Tom said.
In fact, after talking with Wadhwa, Jonathon began searching for more pieces
of the meteorite. He quickly located two more small rocks that weigh about
one ounce each.
Laura said until the rocks are analyzed, she’s trying to play hostess to the
excited neighborhood children whom Jonathon has invited over to see the
space debris. Eventually she hopes to put the objects in a display case and
give it to her son who collects rocks.
The next time the Yuran family could gather to view the Leonid meteor shower
is in 2034. That’s when the comet Temple-Tuttle, which causes the Leonid
display, will pass by Earth again.
“We really enjoyed watching it, with the blue lights and long tails,” Laura
said. “If it wasn’t for Jonathon setting his alarm and waking us up, we
wouldn’t have seen it.”
Tags: attack, chunk, family, forteana, house, husband, list, meteorite, rock, sky
