What is it?
Can't tell from photo.
The finder said, "I found this rock at a site that I thought
at first may have been a lightning strike, it was impacted into the
earth with only about a 1/3 of it showing and the area around it was
charred and still smoldering."
A meteor in space is very cold because space is cold. As it passes
through the atmosphere, the outside gets exceedingly hot - hot enough
to melt the outside and form a glassy fusion crust. However, a meteor
passes through the atmosphere so fast that the inside doesn't get
hot. A meteorite this size would be cold if found right after it fell.
Small meteorites like this don't usually start fires. Fires have been
associated with and perhaps caused by meteors, but the mechanism
is not known.
If this rock is the result of a lightning strike, then the geologic
term for the object is fulgurite - a rock-like object formed by the
melting of soil or sand by a lightning strike (see no. 059).
Fulgurites are often tube-like and hollow, not spheroidal like this
rock, however.
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