Possible meteorite splashes down in British Columbia pool

June 7 (UPI) -- A British Columbia man said he is trying to determine whether an object that splashed down in his backyard pool was a meteorite.

Justin Broad said he was outside his home in Delta earlier this week when something fell from above and splashed into his pool.

He said the object, which he suspects may have been a meteorite, was slightly disintegrating in the water.

"It didn't cloud up and dissipate. It just dropped to the shallow end right at the bottom in a ball," Broad told Global News.

Broad and his wife drained the pool to salvage the object, which appears to be brown with tiny crystals embedded in it.

Alan Hildebrand, a planetary scientist who serves as an associate professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Calgary, said he has only seen pictures of the object, but he thinks it was unlikely to have been a meteorite.

"The dry picture particularly, I agree it looks like dried mud, but the dried mud is brown," he said. "So if it was an unusual type of meteorite, what we call a carbonaceous chondrite, we'd be expecting it to be black or dark gray. So it looks indeed like mud from this planet."

He said carbonaceous chondrite meteorites do share characteristics with Broad's discovery, but he does not believe the object that splashed into the pool came from space.

"Because they're made out of clay, they do disintegrate in the water like this object did," he said. "But it'd be a different color. And of course, what we think of clay or mud on the earth, it's usually brown. So I think this fits the bill."

Broad said he is hoping to have his object studied so he can determine exactly what it is and where it came from.

A Hopewell Township, N.J., family received a surprise last month when a suspected meteorite crashed through their roof and ceiling before coming to a rest on a hardwood floor.