When Joe Velaidum and his partner Laura Kelly stepped outside on a July afternoon to walk their dogs in Prince Edward Island, Canada, he wasn't expecting to come home to something out of this world.
"We were startled to find the walkway littered with debris. Stones everywhere. They were scattered everywhere. And at first, we had no idea what caused it," Velaidum tells NPR.
In fact, Velaidum thought it was something that fell off the roof and began to clean up the gray, dusty material. Kelly's parents, who live nearby, told them they had heard a loud bang. They suggested it could have been a meteorite strike.
Velaidum checked his home security footage and realized they were right.
The meteorite strike is believed to be the first time the complete sound of a meteorite hitting Earth has been recorded on video, one expert says.
"I've heard that other times sound has been recorded, but not like this: Where you see the rock hit the surface, shatter and then you hear the sound at the same time," Chris Herd, professor and curator of the meteorite collection at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, tells NPR.
Velaidum says he was lucky: Just minutes earlier, he had been standing where the meteorite smashed against a brick walkway.
"Had I stayed in that very spot for just a minute or two longer, I'd certainly have been struck and probably killed by this meteorite," he says, adding that it hit the ground with "tremendous force" and left a small dent in the walkway.
Meteors enter the atmosphere at speeds ranging from 25,000 mph to 160,000 mph, according to the American Meteor Society.
Velaidum reported the incident to the University of Alberta's Meteorite Reporting System, and Herd retrieved debris samples for testing, which confirmed it was a meteorite strike.
A 'rough ride' through the heavens
The meteorite — which Herd estimated to have been between the size of a golf ball and a baseball — is what's known as an ordinary chondrite, one of the most common types of meteorites that strike the Earth. They're made up of chondrules, or small, spherical grains of silicate minerals such as olivine and pyroxene. Herd believes the meteorite that struck Velaidum's property came from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The meteorite traveled through the cold depths of space at thousands of miles an hour and encountered hot temperatures through Earth's atmosphere, likely breaking up during the "rough ride," Herd says.
At least 48 tons of meteorite-like material fall to the Earth every day, according to NASA. The chances of any of that material hitting a human are slim, but there have been other close encounters in the past. Meteorites are more likely to land in water, since it covers 71% of the Earth's surface, Herd says.
Velaidum says the incident initially made him cautious, and he looked up whenever he stepped outside. But after some reflection, the experience made him rethink his priorities and what's most important in life, he says.
"We think our lives are so important when we fill it up with our egos, and there are these cosmic events that just dwarf our little concerns," he says. "And this is a tiny little event when it comes down to it in the cosmic scheme of things, but it's such an eye-opener."
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