A meteor falls in Pennsylvania, and lands in ice cream

A rock hit a car in a Walmart parking lot in Lehighton, PA in 2023, busting the window and landing in a half gallon of ice cream. A group of open-minded scientists agreed to take the case and identified the rock as a genuine meteorite.

If any of your friends, family, or neighbors who know you are geologist find a weird looking rock, they will ask you if it’s a meteorite. Because they really want it to be one. Even if you say, “No, it’s not,” they will often not accept your answer. I have had this happen to me. Usually, the rock is a piece of slag which is very common around former industrial areas in Pennsylvania. It looks burned and weird and it may be just hanging out there on the ground by itself.

Only eight meteorites are verified as landed in PA (ironically published by authors Stone and Starr, 1932). It appears now there is a ninth. And this one is an exceedingly rare and interesting tale.

Pennsylvania Geology Winter 2024 edition told me a story I hadn’t heard. By the end of the26-pagee article, now I know why. Here is an excerpt:

On May 17, 2023, at approximately 4:05 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, a rock smashed through the
rear window of a parked vehicle in Carbon County, Pa., landing in a 1.5-quart (1.41-liter) container of
Breyers Natural Vanilla Ice Cream. As it smashed through the window, it passed through a decal that had been placed on the outside of the rear window in memory of a grandson who had been killed by a drunk driver, the safety glass of the window itself, and a tinted film on the inside of the window.

The location was a Walmart lot in Lehighton, PA. The man and his wife put the groceries in the car, got in, and the window smashed. I can only imagine the terror of this event to the occupants. Thankfully, neither was hurt. Police investigated it as a case of vandalism, temporarily keeping the 1.5 x 2.5 inch rock. No other fragments were found.

Examining security camera footage, police saw the rock hit at high speed, but were unable to see any hint that it was thrown by a person. The footage did show a smoky trail in the sky and there had been a meteor shower occurring. The police suspected it might be a meteorite, even though it is extraordinarily rare to be hit by one. With obvious sources (like fly rock or trucks) seemingly eliminated, the vehicle owner kept the rock and “contacted several prominent institutions” to request identification. All turned down the option to test the rock except for the Pennsylvania State Museum (under the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission), who, in turn, contacted the authors of the PA Geology paper, retired members of the PA Bureau of Geological Survey. It’s all about who you know!

The three authors of the paper had some experience in testing suspected meteorites, which they called “meteorwrongs” because none were the real deal. The rest of the paper is a fairly easy-to-follow chronicle of all the careful cutting, polishing and testing that they did with the help of other experts. This included dealing with the contamination of the impact (through the car window decal and the ice cream), and possible contamination from the tools and equipment for testing, while trying to use as little of the sample as possible. The mineralogy was examined – the outer crust and internal composition tested separately.

The “stony” rock was magnetic but did not look like the shiny black metallic meteorites commonly known. Instead, it was consistent with a mineral assemblage of a metamorphosed ultramafic rock – a type of rock that is usually formed in the earth’s mantle – but in this case was likely created as the residue left behind after a host rock partially melts, leaving a nickel-iron metal rock rich in silica via a green mineral named olivine. The samples were sent to a lab in Canada for further testing, confirming the rock was an achondrite (classification of meteorite) that had a multi-stage history.

This was only a preliminary investigation. It is not disclosed what the owner chose to do with the rest of the sample. The total mass was 117.6 g with 23.5 g donated to the State Museum of Pennsylvania for nondestructive study and analysis, and for preservation. Additional study of the sample could lead to a greater understanding of the origin of our solar system.

I do wonder if the couple saw in this event a metaphorical message from their deceased Grandson, whom they obviously loved very much. It’s such a cool story.

Source

The “Ice Cream Drop” Meteorite
Robert C. Smith, II, John H. Barnes, James T. Herbstritt
Pennsylvania Geology 54:4 PDF

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