Don't write off Chicken Little quite yet! A seven-year-old boy in Florida may have been struck by small meteorite fragments that fell to the ground as he was playing outside over the weekend, family members said.
Steven Lippard, who lives with his family in Palm Beach County, required medical staples to close a small wound on his head sustained from rocks that seemingly fell from the sky, reported WKMG, a local TV news station in Orlando, Fla. Lippard was playing in his family's driveway on Saturday (Nov. 23), when he was injured.
At first, Lippard's family thought he had been struck by a golf ball or a bird, but they later found small rocks in the driveway. Researchers at Florida Atlantic University tested the samples and discovered the rocks were highly metallic, which could indicate they had cosmic origins, according to WKMG. The rocks have been sent to other experts for additional testing.
Debris from space falls to Earth on a weekly basis, but most of the objects burn up in the atmosphere or land in the ocean.
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