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Since this didn’t happen to my house… and no one was hurt, I can just marvel at the awesomeness that there is a slim chance that a meteor blew up someone’s house.

Did a meteorite make mincemeat of North Side abodes? Theories abound:

We still don’t know with certainty what set off the explosion at a North Side home last week. At a news conference yesterday, Detective Michael Burns of the city’s arson unit said an illegal drug lab has been ruled out, which leaves investigators to believe natural gas was the cause.

The blast came from the kitchen of 845 Lovitt Way, Detective Burns said. Police are checking gas appliances pulled from its wreckage. An Equitable Gas spokesman said no leak was detected, but an “extraordinary amount of gas passed through the meter” days before the explosion, which brought down an adjacent house, too.

Matt Grebner, a Spring Hill resident, wasn’t buying that.

“Stove creates sonic shock wave?” he asked sarcastically. “That’d be a first.”

He says his house shook as he heard a boom Friday morning, more than a half-mile away from the site of what are now the ruins of two rowhouses. He went outside to see if something had hit his house, and when he found nothing, he realized it was a sonic boom and began thinking of the possibility of a meteorite.

Since both Chicago and Peshtigo, Wisconsin had massive fires on the same night back in 1871, there has been a theory floating around for a while now that both might have been started by a meteor shower. That’s a lot less quaint then saying that a cow kicked over a lamp, and since the O’Leary family you also couldn’t blame the fire on the Irish… so obviously the theory has met with a tremendous amount of skepticism.

So this wouldn’t be the first time… of course they go on to say that it probably wasn’t a meteor, but I’m sure that won’t stop people from sending me emails about how irresponsible I am for not having meteorite insurance.