Dave Kennedy crouched beside the crater on Portmarnock Beach while the camera rolled.

"As you can tell, there's a scorch mark on this side here." He pointed at the blackened rock. "So that would have been the angle it came down at. And it is weighty. I'm not sure of its composition, but we're definitely going to have to find out."

Virgin Media News ran it. A clean crater in the sand. Scorch marks. A heavy rock nobody could identify. An astrophysics enthusiast with a theory about where it came from.

By afternoon people were driving out to see it. They stood at the rim, held up their phones, posted what they filmed. The reporter came back with updates. Scientists took calls. Everyone who arrived already knew what they were looking at before they looked.