Adapted from How to kill an asteroid: the real science of planetary defense Written by Robin George Andrews. Copyright © 2024 Robin George Andrews. Used by permission of the publisher, WW Norton & Company, Inc. Unauthorized copying and reproduction prohibited.
It took me a few days to come to terms with it, Rob Wilcock tells me over coffee in the cafe of a London bookstore. “We don’t think about meteorites. We don’t know how unusual they are.” All he and his wife Kathryn and daughter Hannah knew was that they had “meteorites” at home in Waitrose freezer bags. ” All that was said was that about 11 ounces of something black and sooty was sleeping there. “In the utility room, of course,” he added next to the food processor. “My neighbor had 20 grams” (less than an ounce). Only after they solved the mystery and saw planetary scientists on the news bubbling with excitement about the new meteorite did Rob come to a confident conclusion. The charred confetti in their house must have come from outer space.
The Wilcox family hails from the English town of Winchcombe, which until March 2021, like several other Cotswold hamlets, boasts panoramas of lush countryside, beautifully landscaped gardens and a must-see. It was an idyllic town with a castle. They were used to hosting visitors from all over Britain and even further afield. But on February 28th, a visitor traveled a record distance. It exploded fairly quietly in the night sky around 10pm local time, sending debris flying in all directions. At the time, the only people who noticed it were members of the British Fireball Alliance, a group of meteor enthusiasts led by London’s Natural History Museum. A warning has been issued. Something exploded over the county of Gloucestershire. What happened?
Like many residents of Winchcombe, Rob, Kathryn and Hannah were relaxing at home on a balmy Sunday evening. Hannah, who was in a second-floor bedroom facing the street, thought she heard a clatter, like a picture frame falling from the wall in another room. Although she couldn’t pinpoint the source, she didn’t think much of it when she looked out the driveway the next morning and saw a pile of Stygian soot. The trio went outside and looked at it. Did someone throw this at them? Was it left behind as some kind of message by a mysterious beast?
Rob sent his sons an email with an image of a strange mountain – perhaps from outer space. That’s when one of his sons, Daniel, warned him that there were reports of fireballs throughout the area. Rob dives online and finds a warning sent out by scientists to people in the county. If you live in the area and find some strange rocky thing that wasn’t there before, for the love of God, please do so. Don’t ignore it or hose it down, keep it in a safe place.
Imagine you are in this situation and you are not a scientist or a space hobbyist. What would you do if you were faced with a pile of extraterrestrial dander in your driveway? They didn’t know if it was dangerous or volatile, Kathryn told me. Should they approach it? It looked like an anthill of coffee grounds and probably would have made an out-of-this-world espresso, but they did what any sensible family would do at that stage: put on rubber gloves. I scooped espresso into a polythene sandwich. Use a bag and a plastic yogurt pot, brush small sections with a toothbrush and stainless steel knife, seal everything, and place it in your home.
