Ruth Hamilton can’t believe it. After breaking through his ceiling, a stone of extraterrestrial origin landed inches from his skull!
On October 4, a few residents of the small town of Golden, on the border of British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, admire the sky when suddenly a fireball lights up the night above the lake. Louise, at 11:35 p.m. very precisely. Ruth Hamilton, 66, does not take advantage of the spectacle, because she is then sleeping soundly. Or at least she was sleeping until a loud noise from the ceiling and the feeling of getting debris on her face roused her from her sleep.
“I jumped out of bed to turn on the light. I had no idea what was going on”, Ruth told Victoria News. The 60-year-old looks everywhere around her, then notices a strange stone on the pillow right next to his. Ruth, who fortunately was not injured, rushes to call for help. “Oh my god, there’s a rock in my bed!”, she told them still in shock. The policeman who goes to her house carefully examines the unidentified object which weighs more than a kilo and is as big as a hand.
Stars light up in her eyes when she conjures up alien rock
His first guess is that it came from a nearby construction site in Kicking Horse Canyon. “We called the site managers to ask them if they had carried out explosions, explains Ruth. But they replied no and that they too had seen a bright light in the sky followed by a explosion and loud noise.” The policeman and Ruth then realize the obvious: the stone is a meteorite fragment.
“It was almost a relief because when it happened I thought someone had broken into my house and jumped on my bed or it was a noise coming from a firearm.” Ruth is now awaiting the visit of experts from her insurance company who, of course, have never been confronted with such a case. She hopes that her contract covers this kind of damage! But the main thing is elsewhere for this grandmother who learned a lesson from this misadventure.
“When I think this fragment is maybe billions of years old…”
“I realized that the life was precious and that it could end at any time even when you are quietly lying in bed”, explains Ruth. Stars even light up in her eyes when she conjures up the stone, eventually identified by experts at the University of Calgary as part of a meteor shower that has been visible across the Canadian province of British Columbia, as well as in neighboring Alberta.
They also recognize that what happened to Ruth is extremely rare. “The odds that a meteorite fragment will be large enough to go through a roof and fall on a bed are one in billions”, explains Professor Peter Brown, a specialist in planetary microfragments. The miraculous has therefore had an extraordinary experience and struggles to achieve it. “When I think that this fragment, which may seem trivial, is perhaps billions of years old”breathes Ruth who has kept the precious stone because it fascinates her grandchildren!
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