Oct 9, 2008 5:26 pm US/Eastern
NH Man Says He Found A Space Rock In The Woods
Jim Smith, WBZ Reporter
EAST WAKEFIELD, N.H. (WBZ) ―
Bill McCarthy loves to take walks through the woods of East Wakefield, New Hampshire. But he'll never forget the walk he took a few weeks ago.
That's when he found a 7 inch long hunk of something that looks like a rock, but it isn't.
It was lying of the forest floor. "It looked to be kind of a rock," he said. "So I picked it up."
It's much lighter than a rock and feels like plastic, but it has fossil-like patterns of a leaf on it, and red markings that seem like paint, and it won't melt.
Bill thinks it's from outer space. "It could have been in a container just floating around up in space. It just doesn't belong here."
This isn't bill's first close encounter. More than 30 years ago, a piece of radioactive space junk fell on a frozen pond on his farm. The government came and took it away.
It's safe to say Bill doesn't know where the rock came from. He took it to the fire department to get it tested.
Authorities say it's not radioactive – good news for all of us.
Is this mysterious object extraterrestrial? Bill McCarthy has an open mind. "We're not alone. There could be life out there."
"And you may have gotten a piece of another world?" asked WBZ's Jim Smith.
"Hopefully," McCarthy replied.
In the meantime, he looks for answers to an eerie northern New England mystery.
If the rock is space junk, it wouldn't be unheard of. Thousands of these kind of objects fall from the sky each year around the world.
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