At 9:07 p.m. on April 23, 2019, in Aguas Zarcas de San Carlos, an uninvited visitor fell from the sky. It entered the planet on a steep trajectory at 14.6 km/s—roughly the equivalent of traveling from San José to Cartago in the blink of an eye. In the La Caporal neighbourhood, a fragment of the meteorite struck the zinc roof of Rocky’s house with a dry, sharp thud. Rocky, a German shepherd, had been sleeping peacefully until the universe decided to punch a hole through his bedroom.
The rock pierced the roof, splintered the wood, and left a perfectly round hole, as if someone had used a cosmic hole punch. Rocky bolted out, frightened but unharmed, unaware that he had just dodged billions of years of mineral history.
Nighttime videos from Quepos, Heredia, and Turrialba captured a fireball that changed colour as it fragmented, producing a final flash at an altitude of about 25 kilometres. By morning, newspapers described lights tearing across the sky and a greenish flash. In Aguas Zarcas, neighbours walked through pastures collecting small black, shiny fragments. Altogether, nearly 27 kilograms of material were recovered. One of the fragments weighed more than a kilogram and a half.
The news travelled faster than the meteorite. Almost. Scientists and collectors began asking about the fragments. Some pieces ended up in museums and laboratories, others in private hands. The families who found them received enough money for the scare to turn into a worthwhile investment. One neighbour even opened a new restaurant, aptly named Rancho Meteorito.
Time Capsules
A meteorite falling in Costa Rica may seem unlikely, but Earth lives under a constant bombardment: thousands of meteorites reach the surface each year, though most fall into the ocean or disintegrate without witnesses. What made the Aguas Zarcas meteorite unusual was not that it fell, but what it tells us about the origin of the Solar System.
Our planet continually recycles its crust, leaving no rocks that fully record that origin. The oldest rocks known on Earth are the Acasta gneisses in Canada, dating back about 4.03 billion years.
The Aguas Zarcas meteorite comes from an asteroid formed in the earliest infancy of the Solar System, around 4,567 billion years ago. The materials that make it up are so ancient they function as time capsules: minerals that solidified within the first two or three million years after the Sun was born, and fragments from ancient collisions between small bodies.
Since it broke away from its parent body after one of those impacts, the meteorite had been traveling alone for two million years. Thinking about that long journey—ending on the roof of a doghouse—is a reminder that the universe has good aim. And a sense of humour.
Just days later, the meteorite was formally recognized and studied by researchers from several countries, including my friend and colleague Gerardo Soto. Holding this CM2-type carbonaceous meteorite in his hands, Soto was completely happy. He even confessed that he could now die content.
The Double Edge of a Meteorite
We tend to believe that whatever falls from the sky comes bearing fortune. We want a meteorite that pays off debts. But the sky is not always kind: had the Aguas Zarcas meteorite been a little larger, we would be talking about evacuations, not auctions.
In that sense, the story echoes the film Don’t Look Up (2021): a reminder of how, even in the face of the clearest science, we choose to look away and turn danger into entertainment.
Meteorites can help us understand how water—and perhaps life—began, but they can also remind us of how fragile we are. Somewhere between story and warning lies their strange magnetism. That is why it matters to look up—less naively, more curiously—and to understand those trajectories, those stories, those flashes of light.
Because what is extraordinary is not that a 4,567-billion-year-old rock fell from the sky. What is extraordinary is what we choose to do with that accidental gift: study it, preserve it, or turn it into stories.
The sky is not there to solve our problems or save our lives. It is there for us to discover it. Even on an ordinary night, with an unexpected blow on the roof of Rocky’s house—the German shepherd who knew how to run away just in time, or who was surely curled up in the right spot of his home.