Possible meteorite the size of a potato smashed through the roof of a New Jersey home into bedroom

A metallic object believed to be a meteorite punched a hole in the roof of a central New Jersey home, smashing into a hardwood floor and bouncing around a bedroom.

The family who owns the home discovered the black, potato-sized rock in a corner. It was still warm.

Nobody was hurt and there was no serious damage to the residence in Hopewell Township, north of the state capital Trenton, police said. 

The object measured about 4 by 6 inches and weighs about 4lbs.

Suzy Kop, whose family owns the home, said they initially thought someone had thrown a rock into an upstairs bedroom on Monday, but soon realized that wasn’t the case at all.

The family now plans to meet with an astrophysicist who will further examine the object.

‘We are thinking it’s a meteorite, came through here, hit the floor here because that’s completely damaged, it ricocheted up to this part of the ceiling and then finally rested on the floor there,’ Kop told KYW. 

‘I did touch the thing because it thought it was a random rock, I don’t know, and it was warm.’

Kop said hazmat officials responded to their home to check it out along with her family, in case they had been exposed to some type of radioactive material, but those checks were all negative.

Kop said that she is thankful that no one was at the house when it happened. 

Chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, Derrick Pitts, said the rock could be 4 to 5 billion years old. 

‘It’s been running around in space all that time, and now it’s come to earth and it fell right into their laps, but for it to actually strike a house and people be able to pick up, that’s really unusual. It has happened very few times in history,’ he said. 

 NASA says that anyone who thinks they have found a meteorite must contact the Smithsonian.

‘Although meteorites tend to hit Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds, they slow as they travel through the atmosphere, breaking into small fragments before hitting the ground,’ NASA said. 

‘Meteorites cool rapidly and generally are not a risk to the public.’ 

Meteoroids are bits of asteroids that have broken off, once they enter Earth’s atmosphere they become meteors. An asteroid the size of Mt Everest is what led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. 

Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson recently appeared on CBS This Morning to discuss how officials are preparing to save Earth and combat asteroids.

‘We’ve always known we don’t want to get hit,’ Tyson said. ‘We’ve been hit – and let’s talk to the dinosaurs about what happens when you get hit.

‘We remember the dinosaurs because they have big teeth and they are ferocious – but a few people think about that 70 percent of all the world’s species – of life – went extinct in that very same episode.’ 

Tyson continued: ‘Little ones can come, and maybe we won’t go extinct, but it can take out our grid, and we might have to jump-start civilization.’

The Astrophysicist called the operation to stop asteroids as ‘the most expensive mission’ and said it wasn’t as simple as simply ‘blowing it up.’ 

If you find a meteorite in the UK, it’s yours to keep. In the US, however, if you find a meteorite on your land, you own it, but the US government has stated that no matter who finds a meteorite on public lands, it belongs to the Smithsonian Institute.