Mysterious metal object not a meterorite

The mysterious metallic object that crashed through the roof of a central New Jersey family's home earlier this year was not a meteorite after all, geologists said Friday. While the rocklike object looks like a meteorite, scientists say it is a stainless steel alloy that does not occur in nature and is most likely "orbital debris" - or plain terms, scrap iron.It's still a mystery where the object came from."That's the $64,000 question, and there's probably no way to answer it," said Rutgers University geologist Jeremy Delaney. "A piece of scrap iron dropped out of the sky. The question is how did it get into the sky in the first place? That one I simply cannot answer."Srinivasan Nageswaran, whose family discovered the silver object after it crashed through the roof and into the upstairs bathroom of his home in Freehold Township, was disappointed by the news."That's the nature of science," he said Friday. "If the conclusion from the test says it's not a meteorite, then it's not a meteorite. We have to move forward."

The 46-year-old information technology consultant will now finish repairing his roof. The object, slightly bigger than a golf ball and about as heavy as a can of soup, crashed into his bathroom and dented its tile floor in January."It's still the world's most popular metallic object that fell from the sky," Nageswaran said.Scientists had initially determined it was a meteorite. In late April, it was brought to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City so its composition could be examined by its new variable-pressure scanning electron microscope.