Experts Confirm Rock That Punched Through Family's House Was Meteorite

It's around 4.56 billion years old.

Meteor Madness

Earlier this week, a mysterious four-by-six-inch object punched through the roof of a New Jersey family's home, ricocheting around the room before making a sizeable dent in the hardwood floor.

Experts have since had a chance to analyze the rock, confirming earlier suspicions that it's a meteorite, which ended its epic journey of hundreds of millions of miles a mere 40 miles from Philadelphia.

According to a news release posted on Facebook, researchers from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) determined that the 2.2-pound rock is most likely a type LL-6 chondrite, a meteorite riddled with tiny mineral spheres.

That would make it around 4.56 billion years old, roughly the age of the Sun.

"We are excited to be able to confirm that the object is a true chondrite meteorite, in excellent condition, and one of a very small number of similar witnessed chondrite falls known to science," TCNJ physics professor Nate Magee said in the release.

Rock Garden State

The researchers believe the rock originated from a larger object lurking in the solar system's asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The small blackish rock likely went through a lot of physical changes throughout its life, with the researchers saying it'd "been highly metamorphosed by intense heat even before entering the Earth’s atmosphere."

Nathan Magee, head of the College of New Jersey’s physics department, told The Washington Post that the rock's cracked edges suggest it broke off from a larger meteorite after entering the atmosphere.

Only around 1,000 meteorites of its kind have ever been found, and only 100 were observed falling.

In other words, it's an exceedingly rare event that's generated great excitement in a small New Jersey township.

"If you would ask me, Monday morning, [the] top 100 reasons why I might get a phone call from the police, ‘meteorite’ would not have been on the list," Shannon Graham, a geophysicist at TCNJ, told the WaPo.

More on the rock: Cops Say Meteorite Appears to Have Smashed New Jersey House