"It is unlikely that we will go out to search before the weekend. The NSRI's core business is rescuing people and here there is no loss of life involved," said NSRI Shelley Beach Station Commander Eddie Noyons.

The search for the unidentified object began on Saturday after witnesses reported that an object, possibly an aircraft, had crashed into the sea behind the breaker line off-shore of the Port Shepstone High School.

Police, rescue craft and a fixed wing aircraft were alerted to the scene to investigate.

"Following a full-scale search of the area covering 12 square nautical miles nothing had been found.

"There are no reports of activity in the area that may be related to this incident and there are no aircraft reported to be overdue or missing," said Noyons.

He said numerous witnesses -- including teachers and pupils attending a sports event at the high school, and other bystanders including local fishermen -- were convinced they had seen an aircraft go into the water, including seeing smoke and a water plume.

Interviews with the witnesses revealed that some also reported seeing flames.

"Some reported seeing something, an unidentified object, splash into the sea causing a ripple effect of waves," Noyons said.

Due to the number of witnesses with similar reports, it was presumed that weather activity might have given the impression of something falling into the sea.

Noyons said rescue workers were unable to find oil slicks, petrol spillage or any signs or wreckage during the search on Saturday.

"We are not sure what it was as we are still unaware of any missing aircraft, but will continue the search at the weekend. It's probably a small meteorite or something. The weekend will be a nice time for diving," said Noyons. - Sapa

That crash was pretty close to where Jean Ciechanowski was grilling. Though there is a fence between her property and the vacant yard, she too heard the missile-like sound and felt the impact.

In the end, the object - a large chunk of ice - had landed just a few feet away.

"First I heard the noise of it coming down," she said. "Then there's this crash and it shook the ground all around me. It was a pretty scary thing to go through."

In fact, the Ciechanowskis described the impact as surreal. What they found afterward was a one-foot-deep crater in the adjacent yard with a hunk of ice two feet around sitting in the middle.

The ice fell at about 7:30 p.m. Saturday. When investigated by city police, it was assumed that the ice had fallen from a plane. Police called the Federal Aviation Administration to see if any planes in the area had inadvertently dropped the ice from one of their holding tanks. Or it could be a form of "blue ice," a euphemism used in the airline industry for ice that falls from leaking airplane lavatories.

There were too many planes in the area to find a culprit, police said, but Ciechanowski isn't so sure that the ice came from a plane.

"That was my first thought," he said. "We are on an approach for Atlantic City International Airport. But my neighbor and I were out talking when it happened. We looked around and didn't see a single plane in the area."

Ciechanowski did some quick Internet research and found some other problems with a blue ice theory. The ice in question was clear, did not have a foul odor and seemed to have some minerals in it.

"I'm not saying what it is," Ciechanowski said. "But it doesn't fit what I was reading in the Internet. It made me think it could be something else, like a type of meteor."

A spokesman for the FAA said that despite the lack of color and odor, the ice still could have come from a plane. The FAA intends to investigate the incident.

When they get to the site, they'll be able to see the ice first-hand. Ciechanowski kept a piece in the freezer. And he is handling it with care in case the blue ice theory holds up.

"It's in a freezer we don't use too much and it's in plastic," he said.

For the Ciechanowskis, the mystery ice will provide for some interesting conversations this summer, but they are aware it could have been a lot worse.

"If this had hit something like our house it would have smashed right through it," Dan Ciechanowski said. "If it hit somebody it would be terrible. We're very lucky that nobody got hurt by this thing. I'm still a little paranoid about planes flying overhead right now."

To e-mail Michael Pritchard at The Press:

mpritchard@pressofac.com

Scientists determined that Voyager 1 was approaching the termination shock when it began detecting charged particles that were being pushed back toward the Sun by charged particles coming from outside our solar system. This occurred when Voyager 1 was about 85 AU from the Sun.

One AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 93 million miles.

In contrast, Voyager 2 began detecting returning particles while only 76 AU from the Sun.

"This tells us that the shock down where Voyager 2 is must be closer the sun than where Voyager 1 is," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

The researchers think that the heliosphere's asymmetry might be due to a weak interstellar magnetic field pressing inward on the southern hemisphere.

"The [magnetic] field is only 1/100,000 of the field on the Earth's surface, but it's over such a large area and pushing on such a faint gas that it can actually push the shock about a billion miles in," Stone explained.

Both Voyager spacecrafts were launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida: Voyager 2 headed out on Aug. 20, 1977, Voyager 1 on Sept. 5, 1977.

Currently, Voyager 1 is about 8.7 billion miles from the Sun and traveling at a speed of 3.6 AU per year while Voyager 2 is about 6.5 billion miles away and moving at about 3.3 AU per year.