14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite

[The Mechanic]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5511619/14-year-old-hit-by-30000-mph-space-meteorite.html

14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite

A schoolboy has survived a direct hit by a meteorite after it fell to earth at 30,000mph.


Published: 7:15AM BST 12 Jun 2009

Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky.

A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground.

The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand.

He said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand.

"Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder."

"The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.

"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," he explained.

Scientists are now studying the pea-sized meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany.

"I am really keen on science and my teachers discovered that the fragment is really magnetic," said Gerrit.

Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space.

Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: "It's a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists.

"Most don't actually make it to ground level because they evaporate in the atmosphere. Of those that do get through, about six out of every seven of them land in water," he added.

The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, USA, in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.

 

[Laura]

Doesn't sound like the part that hit him was the same part that caused the foot wide crater - otherwise there would have been a foot-wide crater that included his hand. More likely that he got hit by a grain that was split off and traveling with the main bit. And also likely that the main bit was bigger than a pea.

The Alabama case is not the only one.... See:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/151954-Meteorites-Asteroids-and-Comets-Damages-Disasters-Injuries-Deaths-and-Very-Close-Calls

 

[The Mechanic]

I agree. The "bouncing off" and "a split second later" is not what you'd expect from a meteorite doing 30.000 Mph. Still quite remarkable. Your article is great, spot on. If only people would know about the potential hazard facing humanity.

 

[Keit]

The Alabama case is not the only one.... See:

Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls

Astronomy books and papers far too numerous to cite offer the assurance that "no one has ever been killed by a meteorite." (John S. Lewis, University of Arizona) ©Julian Baum Over the past few years, while sott.net has been tracking the...

www.sott.net

Here's another one to the collection. I checked, and it isn't on the list yet. I don't have access to the full paper, but here's the summary. Funny how the authors talk about it being the first proof ever of the meteorite harming humans. But at least in the end they do admit that there could be other records. Maybe we should send them the link to the SOTT article.

Earliest evidence of a death and injury by a meteorite
First published:22 April 2020
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Our planet experiences falls of meteorites with different airburst and ground impact risk. Some of these meteors can survive after the atmospheric passage and fall into the ground. Although there are claims that people were hit and killed by meteorites in history, the historical records do not prove this fact so far. This issue might be due to the fact that either the manuscript was written in a language other than English or there is not enough interest in historical records. To the best of our knowledge, we show the first proof of an event ever that a meteorite hit and killed a man and left paralyzed another on August 22, 1888 in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, based on three manuscripts written in Ottoman Turkish that were extracted from the General Directorate of State Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey. This event was also reported to Abdul Hamid II (34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire) by the governor of Sulaymaniyah. These findings suggest other historical records may still exist that describe other events that caused death and injuries by meteorites.

Article in Russian about the paper also mentions the following details (translated):

One of the notes was written by a local official and reports that the deadly meteorite was one of several that were falling for about 10 minutes. According to the reports "fireballs" in the sky entered the atmosphere from the north-west. It is noted that their fall not only cause one fatality, but also caused damage to the local peasant households. Curiously, a small meteorite sample was attached to one of the notes - and it may still be possible to find it in Turkish archives.