Meteorite hits a doctor's office in Lorton

A doctor's office in Lorton, Virginia is cleaning up after being hit by a meteorite, but no one was hurt.

Frank Ciampi said the space rock struck the two-story building where he and two other medical professionals work a little after 5:30 p.m. on Monday. He says it punched a hole in the roof, raining pieces of wood, plaster and insulation.

"I was in my office doing charts," Ciampi recalled. It was Monday, a little after 5:30 p.m. He was on the building's second floor. "And I heard a loud boom, almost like a small explosion."

He ran toward the office and then saw all the debris in the hallway. The floor just outside examination room No. 2 - about 10 feet from where Ciampi had been doing paperwork - was littered with small pieces of wood, plaster and insulation.

Upon inspection, more debris lay inside the room. He saw three chunks of stone on the floor that together formed a rock about the size of a tennis ball, with a glassy-smooth surface. Then he saw a hole about the size of the rock in the tile ceiling, and a tear in the maroon carpet where the rock had landed.

At first Ciampi didn't know what to think of those stones, but the office manager said it might be a meteorite. The meteorite weighed about half a pound (226 grams).

A planetary scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History, Cari Corrigan, confirmed it. She says the meteorite weighs just over a half pound and was probably traveling about 220 mph when it struck the building.


Via - Washington Post

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