It's the middle of the night, Papua New Guinea time on January 8th, 2014, and a meteoroid

is hurtling through space towards the Earth's atmosphere.

We think this object was probably between half a meter and one meter in size, so between

a sort of microwave and a dishwasher.

Okay, not a rock you'd want to be hit by, but like, not catastrophic either.

Yeah, that's right.

As it hit the atmosphere, it exploded like a cosmic firework.

You sort of think of what the event looked like as just really violent sudden explosion

followed by a rain of melted droplets raining down into the into the Pacific at cosmic speed.

This rock came from space, but what's even more interesting than that is where it's

space it came from.

I'm Dylan Therese, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's

nay, the universe's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

And today, we're talking to Amir Srirach.

Sorry, can you hold that for one second?

Hey, Amir, it's on my, my roommates that I've been amazing, yeah, yeah.

Amir, at the time of this recording, was still a senior in college.

All right, that's taken care of.

Tell your roommates, I appreciate them.

He's a senior in college who's also made Forbes 30 under 30 and science list,

and who's double majoring in astrophysics at Harvard,

and piano performance at the New England Conservatory of Music.

...