CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island (CTV News) – About two minutes after a Canadian man left his home to go for a walk with his dogs, a meteorite crashed onto the path where he had been standing.
On an ordinary day last July, something extraordinary happened outside Joe Velaidum’s house in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island when a meteorite crashed to the ground. It missed hitting the homeowner, who’d just left to walk his dogs, by about two minutes.
“I was standing literally over the exact spot where the meteorite hit just a couple minutes later,” he told CTV News.
When Velaidum got back to his house, all he saw was debris on the walkway. He and his family didn’t know what caused the mess.
“We had no idea what it was, and we were cleaning it up and were going to throw it away,” Velaidum said.
But a neighbor heard the crash and wondered if it could have been a meteorite.
Velaidum and his family checked their security camera and were shocked by what they saw, so they sent photos to Chris Herd, a meteorite expert at the University of Alberta. Herd happened to be headed to Prince Edward Island for a family vacation, so he was also able to collect samples of the debris.
Herd confirmed that a meteorite had crash-landed outside Velaidum’s home. It was the first one ever recorded to land on Prince Edward Island – but the meteorite also turned out to be a first for the world.
“The first time we’ve ever had a recorded fall of a meteorite hitting the surface of the Earth with sound included,” Herd said.
The never-before-heard sound is that of a space rock about the size of a kiwi shattering on impact.
“When I showed it to my wife, she said it sounded like ice breaking, like if you took a chunk of ice and just smashed it,” Herd said. “It’s remarkable because it’s never really been heard before.”
Herd says the meteorite would have been traveling around 200 kilometers per hour, or 124 miles per hour, when it smashed into Velaidum’s walkway. He says he’s not sure Velaidum would have survived if he had been struck.
“I have been thinking about it a lot because when you have a near-death experience, it kind of shocks you,” Velaidum said. “We need to be reminded that the lives that we lead are just a small part of this celestial drama that’s so much bigger than we could possibly imagine.”
Herd says the meteorite likely broke from an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. While meteors can often be seen speeding across the sky, only about 70 meteorites have been recovered in Canada.
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