Fragments of a meteorite which was formed before Earth smashed through an American man's home and narrowly missed him by a matter of feet.
On June 26, pieces of the ancient space rock punched through the roof and damaged a laminate floor of a home in McDonough Georgia, near the city of Atlanta.
On the same day, numerous eyewitnesses across the southern states of America reported seeing a fireball in the skies in broad daylight.
It was revealed that the meteorite from which it came from formed around 4.56billion years ago
|UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Scientists say that over 50,000 meteorites have been identified on Earth, but only one has ever been documented to have struck a person.
The Georgia resident narrowly avoided becoming the second recorded case by just 14 feet.
Following analysis of the fragments that hit the home, it was revealed that the meteorite from which it came from formed around 4.56billion years ago - 20million years before Earth did.
University of Georgia planetary geologist, Scott Harris, examined the fragments, which weighed 23 grams and was roughly the size of a cherry tomato.
Pieces of the ancient space rock punched through the roof and damaged a laminate floor of a home in McDonough Georgia
|UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Mr Harris said: “It belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago.”
The planetary geologist said that upon impact the fragment created a sound similar to a close-range gunshot.
He said: “I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things.
"One was the collision with his roof, one was a tiny cone of a sonic boom, and a third was it impacting the floor all in the same moment."
The planetary geologist said that upon impact the fragment created a sound similar to a close-range gunshot
|UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Mr Harris revealed that the man who was almost hit by the fragments told him that he is still spotting space dust around his living room.
He said: “There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments."
Only 27 meteorites have ever been recovered in the southern state of Georgia.
The scientist noted that "this is something that used to be expected once every few decades and not multiple times within 20 years".
He added that advances in modern technology coupled with attentive members of the public "will help us recover more and more meteorites".
According to Nasa scientists, only five per cent of the original object that enters the atmosphere, often sized between a pebble and a fist, actually ends up hitting the ground.
The vast majority of space rocks break up while travelling at speeds exceeding tens of thousands of miles per hour in the Earth's atmosphere.
It is believed that the fireball spotted by hawk-eyed residents in multiple southern states was a result of the pressure on the meteorite being greater than its strength.
Mr Harris revealed that he and his University of Georgia colleagues were planning to name the object recovered as the McDonough Meteorite.