An Irondale man suspects the rock which damaged his car came from outer space.
It happened late one night a couple of weeks ago.
Roy Self says a rock weighing more than thirty pounds shattered his rear window and dented the steel frame underneath.
At first he assumed it was vandalism, but now he thinks it might be a meteorite.
Either way he wants to know for sure.
"I kept on looking at this rock and I said, Hey there's no way that this thing could have done so much damage from somebody hurling it, bending the frame and everything else. So I said, Hey this could be an asteroid!"
We contacted a NASA meteor researcher with the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Dr. Bill Cooke did not want to make a determination over the phone, but he did offer some insight.
"Most meteors are about seventy percent made of ice and snow. About thirty percent come from asteroids and those meteroids can drop rocks," said Dr. Bill Cooke.
Meteroid refers objects outside the Earth's atmosphere, meteor refers to those passing through it, and meteorite is used to describe those that reach the surface.
The mystery rock is mostly grayish with visible lines, but there are darker parts with different surface indentations.
"Meteorites can have lines, but if it looks like it was laid down over time like sandstone or something that's probably not a meteorite." said Dr. Bill Cooke. "Some meteorites if they are of the rare kind can go for big bucks. Most likely if it is a meteorite it is what we call a stony meteorite and not worth much."
Alabama is the only place where a confirmed meteorite has struck a human being.
It happened to a woman in Sylacauga after it crashed through her roof.
