Rockin' all night

Things are looking up in Hopewell Township, New Jersey. 

Or, more accurately stated, people should be looking up in Hopewell Township, because that's where a small black rock hit a house, and experts are leaning toward calling it a meteorite.

Crash bang, came the rock through the roof and through the ceiling, and it landed on a bedroom floor, denting the hardwood. No one was hurt, but wow!

“It appears whatever came from the sky fell through the roof of the top window, that’s my dad’s bedroom,” resident Suzy Kop says. She first checked out the damage to her house and then went to pick up the 4 inch-by 6-inch oblong rock, and it was warm.

Meteorites are rocks the belong in space but occasionally run free and fall to earth. Most of them come from asteroids (pause for laughter) and science says that around 500 of these dudes come to Earth every year, but less than 50 are recovered in an average year (most of them "land" on water, so to speak, or in remote places.) 

Derrick Pitts is an astronomer at the Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia, and he says it's ultra-rare to have a meteorite strike a house.

Referring to the recent Jersey case, “Here’s an instance where a sizable object has not only fallen in a populated region, it also hit a house and it was immediately collected by the occupants,” Pitts said.  “The instance of that happening, you can count on one hand over the last 1,000 years, maybe.”

The Township is asking residents to keep an eye out for other possible meteorites or evidence of falling rocks on the ground, while still keeping a wary eye on the sky. 

And walking at the same time.