When (Small) Meteorites Attack

When Dee Riddle heard the breaking glass, she thought her bathroom mirror must have shattered.

What she found was quite different: A grayish metallic object about the size of a deck of cards had crashed through a bedroom window and into a computer table.

Intrigued scientists from nearby Illinois State University said it was likely a meteorite.

"In my 36 years of investigating meteorite calls, this looks like the real thing," said Robert Nelson, a geology professor at ISU. The last confirmed meteorite to strike Bloomington was in the '30s, he said.

Nelson and other experts ruled out the possibility that it had been thrown by someone near the house, and they said it wasn't likely to have been space junk from a satellite or spacecraft.