Boy Hit by Meteorite

[Old Coot]

Source: space.com

A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar.

"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," Gerrit Blank said in a newspaper account. Astronomers have analyzed the object and conclude it was indeed a natural object from space, The Telegraph reports.

Most meteors vaporize in the atmosphere, creating "shooting stars," and never reach the ground. The few that do are typically made mostly of metals. Stony space rocks, even if they are big as a car, will usually break apart or explode as they crash through the atmosphere.

There are a handful of reports of homes and cars being struck by meteorites, and many cases of space rocks streaking to the surface and being found later.

Read more: http://www.space.com/news/090612-boy-hit-by-meteorite.html

[Wizard777]

1. Too cool! What kind of superhero powers did he get?

[Arctic Dave]

2. LOL. I think he is called "Iron Head" now.

[aquart]

3. He has a meteor scar! He's the boy who lived!

[meegbear]

21. ...

:spray:

[damntexdem]

26. No, it's not like that: it was a terrorist meteorite perpetrating a fall-by whopping.

He's lucky to have survived.

Send that meteorite to Girmo! ;-)

[Submariner]

4. A car in Peekskill, NY was hit quite awhile ago

Saw this on the news at the time.


Credit: Pierre Thomas (LST), ENS Lyon
Explanation: The Peekskill meteor of 1992 was captured on 16 independent videos and then struck a car. Documented as brighter than the full Moon, the spectacular fireball crossed parts of several US states during its 40 seconds of glory before landing in Peekskill, New York. The resulting meteorite, pictured here, is composed of dense rock and has the size and mass of an extremely heavy bowling ball. If you are lucky enough to find a meteorite just after impact, do not pick it up -- parts of it are likely to be either very hot or very cold. In this weekend's Leonid meteor shower, few meteors, if any, are expected to hit the ground.

http://www.astronet.ru/db/xware/msg/1217918

That kid has a story no one can match.

[Dakota Flint]

5. Man. Try explaining that to your car insurance....

[Critters2]

6. !

:spray:

[MUAD_DIB]

29. I'd bet it is not covered. The insurer would probably call it an

act of god to get out of paying.

[Strong Atheist]

34. "God smites boy" nt.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

8. How could it strike something after it was so thoroughly captured?

Did it escape?

:hide: :evilgrin: :rofl:

[Alcibiades]

7. Now THAT'S a low-probability event

But it's bound to have happened before, and is sure to happen again. Though bears and socialized medicine may be scary, this shows we must be ever-vigilant against the oft-underestimated meteorites.

[jayfish]

9. Ummmm.... No.

This story doesn't pass the smell test.

Jay

[berni_mccoy]

10. Agreed. Original Story from the Telegraph:

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

"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."

More than likely, the boy is confused and got hit by shrapnel from the impact. There is no way it would "bounce" off his hand at 30k MPH. It would have gone straight through or taken his hand off.

[jayfish]

14. Shrapnel Was My First Thought As Well.

Cool story but the reporting by the Telegraph is atrocious.

Jay

[struggle4progress]

32. The source "Telegraph" itself is a warning about the credibility of the story

[Rebubula]

11. Ummmm....

Glad your nose can smell a boy lying in Germany

Will you come back and apologize for calling him a liar of it is proven?

[berni_mccoy]

12. He's not calling the boy a liar. He's just stating that he's skeptical of the story as it is told.

I am too.

[jayfish]

13. Sure!

See Berni's post of the original story. There are plenty of things that are physically wrong with the story.

Jay

[Javaman]

15. Honestly, just think about it.

if it hit his hand THEN caused a foot wide crater, do you think he would still have a hand?

Unless that kid was wearing metal gloves, I think it was shrapnel.

[Blandocyte]

17. Indeed

more like "Bat Boy Hit By Meteorite" type of story.

[jayfish]

19. Not Quite That Bad, But Most Certainly...

poorly reported and edited.

Jay

[Robb]

16. Good parenting, clearly.

...Note the boy did not hit the meteorite back.

[uppityperson]

18. See! Should NOT have probed the moon!

[galledgoblin]

20. man, I wish I had a scar with a cool story like that behind it! (n/t)

[NBachers]

22. Okay- Here's a question for Meteor Fans

When I was a kid in upstate New York, I found that I could pass a magnet through the sandy glacial soil near my house and collect little iron filing-type objects on it. Being a meteor freak, I declared that these were micro-meteorites that had reached Earth and lodged in the soil. I started a meteorite collection.

So whaddya think- micro-meteorites, or just iron-based geological particles?

We'll be waiting . . . for your answer.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8t59jorH2DM/SUWMPPKdckI/AAAAAAAADnE/HqmBEfEWm-8/s400/Gort,+Klaatu+Night.jpg

[jayfish]

23. Just A Guess, But I'd Have To Say They Were...

left there by the advance and retreat of Ice-Age glaciers. As the glaciers made their way down from Northern latitudes, they dug through iron deposits and carried some ore with them. When they started to melt, the tiny pieces of iron stayed behind. :shrug:

Jay

[NBachers]

28. Hey Jayfish, that was a perfect answer

and it fits perfectly with the geology where I lived. You could see Lake Ontario from my house, far away, and the landscape had all sorts of interesting glacial details and evidence. So maybe my "meteorite alien particles" were actually Canadian alien particles.

Time for a Labatt's Blue.

[diane in sf]

30. I just read a really interesting book about how there was a very large multiple meteor

strike over North America and parts of Northern Europe aprox 12,000 years ago. Those little magnetic bits are found in all these places in a very thin layer along with a thin layer of burnt up organic stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_comet

[NBachers]

36. Pretty info-rich wikipedia page

Thanks for that.

[zbdent]

24. That's classified ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x52827

[proteus_lives]

25. Cool.

How do you say, "Oh, fuck that hurts! What the hell was that?" in German?

[X_Digger]

27. He better buy a lottery ticket NOW!! n/t

[struggle4progress]

31. ... questions are surfacing about the validity of Blank's story. The Telegraph reports that ...

the meteorite entered the Earth at more than 30,000 miles per hour. But could Blank have even survived that? "If it had been moving that fast a direct hit would've killed him," writes Discovery.com . "That speed is about ten times faster than a rifle bullet, and had it actually hit him at that velocity a rock the size of a pea would've torn a hole through him the size of a basketball. Now, it's possible the meteorite simply barely grazed him, but the article isn't clear." Discovery also wonders whether the boy was hit by the meteorite first, or if the meteorite hit the ground and Blank was simply hit by shrapnel. It also mentions that even though media reports state that Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, says it was indeed a meteorite, Kortem himself told Dutch science writer Govert Schilling that he was misquoted ...
Boy Says He Was Hit by Meteorite
Updated: Friday, 12 Jun 2009, 3:13 PM PDT
Published : Friday, 12 Jun 2009, 3:04 PM PDT
* By LILY FU
http://www.myfoxspokane.com/dpp/news/world/dpgo_boy_hit_by_meteorite_lwf_061209_2567301

... The somewhat more fishy part of the story is the Telegraph's reporting of a foot-wide crater caused on impact. Would something that small be able to generate enough force, even at super high speeds, to create such a large crater but skip off a boy's hand with little more than a scratch? ...
14 Year-Old Boy Survives Close Call With Meteorite
Shut-ins have a new reason to stay at home
By Dan Smith Posted 06.12.2009 at 4:17 pm
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-06/14-year-old-boy-survives-close-call-meteorite?page=

... The report drew skepticism from experts on meteor falls: "It's absolute nonsense," Darryl Pitt, curator of the Macovich Collection of Meteorites, told msnbc.com. "It's theoretically impossible." Pitt took issue with reports quoting Blank as saying that he saw a bright flash before he was struck, or that the meteorite sped through the atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Neither of those claimed observations match up with what's known about falling space rocks, Pitt said. "Who knows what's going on in this young man's mind, but he's not telling the truth," he said ...
Teen knocked down ... by a meteorite?
14-year-old German boy says flying rock from above left a scar
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31322855/ns/technology_and_science-space/

[TankLV]

40. I think must be the same bullet that killed Kennedy...

[Wizard777]

33. I've learned some important things from this. Like playing catch with God can hurt.

He's got a 16,000 - 20,000 mph fast ball. :wow:

I've also solved the conundrum of what to do about a meteor on a collision course with earth. We need to build a satellite capable of swinging a giant bat to knock the meteor right out of the galaxy. Even with the meteors crushing defeat of the dinosaurs. I think that satellite could tie the score in that intergalactic game of life at Meteors: 1 Humans: 1. We could even win this thing. :popcorn:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

35. Interesting...I don't recall hearing about this Chicago incident in 2003

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/mystery_monday_040419.html
I would think I would have remembered that. Have to check DU archives.

[Xithras]

37. LOTS of people have been struck by them.

There are a half dozen reports of people being hit by them in the US alone over the past 50-60 years. Worldwide the number is in the dozens.

Two points: First, a meteorite would need to be pretty huge to hit the ground at 30,000 miles an hour, and would need to have a particulat type of orbit to reach the ground at that speed. Speed is relative, and meteorites coming in from similar orbits to Earth often have much lower relative velocities.

On top of that, most meteorites lose nearly all of their speed entering the atmosphere. Remember that the energy of an impact can be calculated as 1/2MV^2. The lower the mass of an object, the less kinetic energy it will have as it falls to Earth. As it disintegrates and loses mass, its energy level declines. As it loses energy, it loses the ability to push through the atmosphere as quickly. Many smaller meteorites hit the ground with terminal velocities of less than 100MPH, and some hit at far lower speeds than that. Speeds that low are still potentially lethal, but are survivable depending on where and how it hit.

That said, I doubt he was actually hit by the meteorite. It's far more probable that it hit the ground next to him and that he was then struck by ejecta. His story also sounds a bit embellished, but that's to be expected from a 14 year old kid who nearly got clobbered by a space rock.

[Xithras]

38. dupe n/t

double post.

[PfcHammer]

39. Classic 2 body problem