It Came From Outer Space and Landed in the Midwest

"Piece of Midwestern Meteor Found"
Space News, Discovery News (April 17, 2010)

"A peanut-sized, encrusted rock may be a fragment of a meteor that lit up Midwestern skies on Wednesday night.

"Scientists say an apparent fragment from a meteor that lit up Midwestern skies this week has been recovered in southwestern Wisconsin.

"The fragment weighs 0.3 pounds and is about the size of an unshelled peanut. The meteor had streaked across the sky Wednesday and was visible from southern Wisconsin and northern Iowa to central Missouri...."

A quick analysis suggests that this meteor came from the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. I don't expect that anything worthy of a fifties science fiction B-movie will come of this piece of rock - and any others that get found.

On the other hand, I expect that data about that rock will be filed away - and used from time to time, as scientists study the stuff that falls on us. Fairly steadily.

There's quite a bit more to the article, including a pretty good explanation for why this meteor wasn't part of the Gamma Virginids shower. Which probably means more if you're a meteor watcher or astronomer.

Cool photo, though.