A flaming stone fell from the sky and a loud explosion was heard as it landed at the Negros Occidental High School campus in Bacolod City, NOHS principal Mario Amaca said Friday, June 11.
Amaca said the fireball turned out to be a shiny black stone that is about two and a half inches thick and three inches long. “It is almost as big as my fist and looks like a meteorite,” he said.
“It is very hard, if you try scratch it with a sharp object it turns white and goes back to its original color,” he added.
The “space stone” fell near the guards’ barracks at the NOHS campus at about 4 p.m. June 4, Amaca said.
The stone was found by the wife of an NOHS guard but we all heard the explosion from a distance when it landed, Amaca said.
Janette Sarcillo said she saw a burning object falling from the sky that grew bigger and bigger as it approached and made a loud explosion as it landed.
He showed the stone to the media so if there are geologists who see it, they can help them identify what it is, Amaca said.
A Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office geologist will visit the NOHS campus on Monday, June 14, to identify the stone, Amaca said.
Amaca said the NOHS science teachers suspect that the stone is a meteorite.
“Meteoroids are objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids…When meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere (or that of another planet, like Mars) at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or ‘shooting stars’ are called meteors,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the Unites States said on its website.
“When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite, it added.
The NASA website has a picture of a stone similar to the one found at NOHS.*