A black stone fell from the sky and landed at the Negros Occidental High School (NOHS). (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)
BACOLOD CITY – A flaming stone which reportedly fell from the sky landed at the Negros Occidental High School (NOHS) campus in this city on Friday.
According to NOHS principal Mario Amaca, he and other persons in the school heard a loud explosion at about 4 p.m.
Janette Sarcillo, the wife of one of the school’s security guards, later reported that she found the “space stone” that fell near the guards’ barracks.
“I saw the flaming object fall from the sky. It grew bigger and bigger as it approached the ground and made a loud explosion as it landed,” she said.
A geologist of the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office will visit the NOHS campus on Monday to identify the stone.
Amaca said the fireball turned out to be a shiny black stone that is about two and a half inches thick and three inches long.
“It is almost as big as my fist and looks like a meteorite,” he said.
“It is very hard. If you scratch it against a sharp object, it turns white and goes back to its original color,” he added.
Amaca said NOHS science teachers suspect the stone is a meteorite.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States, meteoroids are objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids.
When meteoroids enter the earth’s atmosphere at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or “shooting stars” are called meteors.
“When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite,” it said.