A fireball crossed the North Island. Then a group of ordinary people, 200 cameras and one fridge magnet helped find what survived.
New Zealand's newest confirmed meteorite was found using something currently holding a shopping list to somebody's fridge.
A magnet.
On 28 July, a huge fireball crossed the North Island sky. People saw the flash, heard a boom and posted their recordings. A network of about 200 specialist cameras tracked its path.
Then the sky part of the investigation became a ground search.
Steve Wyn-Harris from Fireballs Aotearoa spotted a small black stone near a riverbank. Most suspicious rocks turn out to be what meteorite hunters call "meteor-wrongs", which is now one of my favourite scientific words.
On a video call with other citizen scientists and geologists, he held the stone near a fridge magnet. It clicked. Meteorites can contain iron and nickel, so the attraction was a promising clue. Experts later confirmed the fragments really had come from space.
Here is the naming system, because space apparently enjoys a vocabulary test.
While the rock is still in space, it is a meteoroid. When it enters the atmosphere and makes the streak of light, that is a meteor. If part of it survives and reaches the ground, it becomes a meteorite.
The newly recovered pieces are expected to become New Zealand's 11th documented meteorite. Their path suggests they came from the asteroid belt, and scientists will study them to learn more about their origins.
What I love about this story is that nobody found the rock by guessing wildly where space debris might be. Cameras recorded the fireball. People calculated its path and the effect of the wind. Searchers checked the predicted area. A magnet gave them another clue. Geologists confirmed it.
That is science in its best form: look, measure, predict, test, check, then get very excited when the tiny black rock clicks.
Also, do not start testing every black stone in New Zealand and declaring it an asteroid. The magnet is a clue, not a certificate from space.
Most of them will still be meteor-wrongs.