Did Falling Meteorites Injure 7-Year-Old Florida Boy?
Don't write off Chicken Little quite yet! A seven-year-old boy in Florida may have been struck by small meteorite fragments that fell to the ground as he was playing outside over the weekend, family members said.
Steven Lippard, who lives with his family in Palm Beach County, required medical staples to close a small wound on his head sustained from rocks that seemingly fell from the sky, reported WKMG, a local TV news station in Orlando, Fla. Lippard was playing in his family's driveway on Saturday (Nov. 23), when he was injured.
At first, Lippard's family thought he had been struck by a golf ball or a bird, but they later found small rocks in the driveway. Researchers at Florida Atlantic University tested the samples and discovered the rocks were highly metallic, which could indicate they had cosmic origins, according to WKMG. The rocks have been sent to other experts for additional testing.
Debris from space falls to Earth on a weekly basis, but most of the objects burn up in the atmosphere or land in the ocean.
Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+.
Get the Space.com Newsletter
Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
Denise Chow is a former Space.com staff writer who then worked as assistant managing editor at Live Science before moving to NBC News as a science reporter, where she focuses on general science and climate change. She spent two years with Space.com, writing about rocket launches and covering NASA's final three space shuttle missions, before joining the Live Science team in 2013. A Canadian transplant, Denise has a bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto, and a master's degree in journalism from New York University. At NBC News, Denise covers general science and climate change.