* Astronomy

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Bloomington chunk of metal

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As testing continues it is looking more and more likely the metal object that crashed through a Bloomington couple’s home may be something manmade instead of a meteorite.

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Help wanted. Homeowners in Bloomington, Illinois, seeking carpenter and cabinetmaker with experience in repair of meteorite damage.
Or…Anybody know a good lawyer?
The alleged "meteorite" that smashed through a window Monday, March 12, at the home of David and Dee Riddle of 25 Partner Place, Bloomington, may be a chunk of ordinary steel plate spit out of an industrial wood-chipper about 300 meters from the Riddle home, according to James Day, a geology professor at Illinois State University who examined the reputed space rock. "We have our suspicions this may not be a legitimate meteorite."

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This was no ordinary computer crash.
A woman in Bloomington, Illinois, says what appears to be a meteorite came through a bedroom window and landed on her computer table.
Scientists from Illinois State University are intrigued.

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Latitude: 40.472038°, Longitude: -89.013092°

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A Bloomington family is cleaning up today after a rare meteorite crashed through their bedroom window. David and Daneia Riddle live at 25 Partner Place in Bloomington, which is the only local site to record meteorite crash since 1938. David says the fire department sent a hazardous materials crews to check for radiation. Then, a geology professor rushed to the scene.

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When Dee Riddle heard breaking glass inside her central Illinois home on Monday morning, she first thought a bathroom mirror had shattered.
But what had broken was a bedroom window and what had caused it to break was an object that had fallen from space, scientists called in to investigate concluded.
The small metallic object found near the window was most likely a meteorite, said Robert "Skip" Nelson, a geology professor at Illinois State University.

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A piece of the sky has fallen on Bloomington before.
On a summer night in 1938, the Rev. Luther Cox and his family were listening to the radio at their home at 301 Howard St., according to an account on the Web site of Meteoritical Society, an international group dedicated to studying meteorites and planetary sciences. Between 9 and 10 p.m., they heard a noise on the back porch.

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A Bloomington couple caught a falling star Monday morning not quite in their pockets but in a bedroom of their house.
A chunk of metal that crashed through the bedroom window of David and Dee Riddle just after 9:30 a.m. may be a meteorite but it also could be a piece of space junk according to preliminary analysis by several Illinois State University geology professors.
However, the professors who had a look at it agree that whatever the heavy, gray metal-based object that crashed through their window definitely came from space.
Robert “Skip” Nelson, a professor of geology at ISU, came out to Riddles’ home to take a look at the object, which is about the size and shape of deck of cards.
Nelson said based on the density of the object, the metal could be an iron-nickel mixture or a heavy stainless steel. It is unlikely a satellite or spacecraft would contain metal that heavy and dense.

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