As a space rock slammed into the walkway in front of a Canadian couple’s house, it screeched like a sheet of ice shattering.
Joe Velaidum and Laura Kelly, who live on Prince Edward Island, caught a meteorite hitting their property on their doorbell camera. Some say this could be the first video recording of a meteorite that also captured its audio.
Thanks to doorbell cameras, people have become the unwitting voyeurs of some strange affairs: a delivery man hurling a fragile package, a prowling bobcat with glowing eyes, a criminal suspect moseying down the street. They pale in comparison to this, Velaidum told Mashable. The meteorite is one of only 69 known to have struck Canada, according to The Meteoritical Society, which maintains the most comprehensive data set.
“What are the chances that this meteorite traveled hundreds of millions of kilometers, just bangs around in space, ends up in our atmosphere, ends up in this tiny little community on this tiny little island in the Atlantic Ocean, and then onto our doorstep,” Velaidum said. “The odds of this happening are just so astronomical.”
About 95 grams of rubble were recovered from the meteorite strike on Prince Edward Island in Canada.
Credit: University of Alberta Meteorite Collection
NASA estimates about 48.5 tons of billions-of-years-old meteor material rain down on Earth daily, but much of it vaporizes in the atmosphere or plunges into water, which covers over 70 percent of the planet. People have discovered over 82,000 confirmed meteorites. The vast majority are bits of asteroids from the main belt, but about one percent hail from Mars and the moon.
On July 25, 2024, Velaidum and Kelly prepared their dogs for a walk. As they were about to leave, Velaidum stopped to pick up a leash, then headed out. When they returned, they were shocked to find light gray dust and black stones scattered in a star shape on the path.
The force of a meteorite left a nearly one-inch divot in a brick.
Credit: University of Alberta Meteorite Collection
The couple began sweeping up the mess, wondering if something had perhaps rolled off the roof. Whatever it was, it left a nearly one-inch gouge in the brick.
Kelly’s parents, who live close, came over and said they had heard a loud sound. It was her father who first suggested the crash might have been a meteorite. That’s when Kelly reviewed their doorbell camera footage to see if it had recorded the event. Sure enough, they saw a rock drop from the sky.
Watch the right side of the screen at the four-second mark. Video courtesy of Laura Kelly and Joe Velaidum
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That’s when they reached out to the University of Alberta’s Meteorite Reporting System. Chris Herd, the curator of the university’s collection, looked at photos of the debris. Usually the reports he receives are invalid, he said, estimating that about “99.9 percent” of the rocks are from Earth.
“That’s a rough guess. It could be more than that,” he said, laughing.
But what he noticed in the rubble was a telltale fusion crust, a thin glassy layer that forms on meteors as their surface melts from air friction. Still, geologists would need to collect samples and bring them into a lab for a full workup.
“The odds of this happening are just so astronomical.”
Once the pair realized they might truly have an extraterrestrial rock on their hands, they worked harder to scavenge as much of the debris as possible. Kelly’s father assisted with a strong magnet. When all was said and done, they had recovered about 95 grams’ worth, roughly the weight of 17 U.S. quarters.
“I think at one point they said they were actually using a vacuum cleaner on the lawn to try to get stuff up, and then running a magnet through the dust bag to try to get the material,” Herd said.
The meteorite landed in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, a province of Canada.
Credit: EyesWideOpen / Getty Images
Coincidentally, Herd already had a vacation on the books for a trip to Prince Edward Island just two weeks later, so he and his family made a detour to the house. Though all space rocks on Earth are rare, he classified the meteorite as a so-called ordinary chondrite, the most common kind of stony meteorite, composed mostly of silicate minerals, with some metal content.
Meteorites have long been divided into two basic categories: the “falls” and the “finds.” If any part of the event leading to the landing was witnessed, either by people or their equipment, it is labeled a fall. The rest are finds, according to The Meteoritical Society. In a 2015 paper, the society said falls were extremely rare, accounting for only 410 meteorites in its bulletin since its inception in 1957, compared to tens of thousands of finds.
Whether this particular meteorite, officially named Charlottetown this month for where it landed, is the first fall captured with audio and video, is not known. The Meteoritical Society doesn’t keep those kinds of records, said Guy Consolmagno, the organization’s president.
The Charlottetown meteorite left a star-shaped splatter of dust and a divot in a brick walkway.
Credit: University of Alberta Meteorite Collection
But what is clear to Herd is the research value of the specimen and its recording. The video documented the timing of the meteorite’s arrival, down to the second. That information, coupled with fireball observations, could help determine the parent meteoroid’s orbit and potentially where it came from. The frames of the video could also be analyzed for angle and speed. There may even be something to learn about the meteorite’s physical properties from the acoustics, he said. Herd plans to do more studies.
Velaidum, a professor of religious studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, said the experience has changed him. After looking through the doorbell videos, he realized when he had stopped to move a dog leash, he was standing where the meteorite struck just minutes later. He has spent the past few months wondering if it could have killed him.
“I do teach a course on the meaning of life, where we talk about how grand and big the universe is in comparison to how small human life is,” he said. “That was all just sort of an academic exercise before this had happened.”
