Schoolboy survives direct hit by meteorite

[xnomad]

It is the Daily Mail so could be phony ;) but nevertheless here is the article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1192503/Close-encounter-rock-kind-Schoolboy-survives-direct-hit-meteorite-travelling-30-000mph.html

[troypiggo]

Good grief. The only thing "pea-sized" about that article is the size of your brain if you actually believe it, surely?

[coldspace]

It was all over the morning news, on quite a few channels. They are testing the rock but they beleive it was an iron one that about 5 billion yrs old.
This happened to someone in the states in the 70's and also a few cars and houses as well, so not impossible.
You never know, and if people don't keep an open mind about strange things then they have a pea sized brain.
Stranger things have happened.

Matt.

[sheeny]

I gather the "stain" on the road is the "smoking foot wide crater"?:lol: That's not what it looks like...:whistle:

I wonder what direction he saw it coming from? Directly over head?

Al.

[Zaps]

I call shennanigans.

Pea-sized? Like, say, a small-caliber bullet? What velocity would it have for it to leave a "foot-wide crater" in hard ground? My guess is high enough to tear off any human arm that got in the way.

And to still be hot? It must have been travelling mighty fast to retain any heat after passing through the very cold upper atmosphere. If it's travelling that fast, it can only have been part of a much larger object, else it would have completely burned away before impact.

Most small objects which have survived upper atmospheric entry intact are in freefall, with a ballistic trajectory. Some have been witnessed to bounce upon impact with the ground, and often still have frost on them. For it to be otherwise, the crater would likely look a lot more like a certain one in Arizona.

This "story" is completely bogus in my opinion.

[Omaroo]

I'm glad the rock's OK.

[sheeny]

:lol: So its a good news story all round!

...besides everyone knows that these papers "are some of the best investigative journalism on the planet".

Al.

[Outbackmanyep]

You notice there is no bruising on his hand? Can't say it's "impossible" but it smells a bit like.......
Where's the photo of the crater??? You would think that if the projectile had hit "dirt" the size of the projectile to the crater would be 1/20th diameter, so the projectile you'd think would only be 15mm diameter and vaporised upon impact to release the energy required to make a crater, BUT if it was travelling at a much slower speed then how would it leave a "crater"??????

Just doesnt add up!

[GrahamL]

Ain't that the truth Al.. they always get the important stuff out to us.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1192473/Chastity-Bono-Chaz-Chers-daughter-having-sex-change.html

:)

I'm good with the meteorite but how did every bit of the ejected material
from the footpath miss him.

[troypiggo]

Oh, well if it's all over the morning news it must be fair dinkum. Sorry.

I'll take my pea-sized, closed-minded brain off to read more of the British tabloids to learn more interesting facts and true stories.
:ship1:

:D

[Liz]

Interesting ... but very dodgy indeed. :rolleyes:
Anything coming in with the speed and heat of a meteorite should have inflicted much worse damage to a tender little hand, than a minor scratch??

[marki]

Believe it or not I was actually present when a simlar incident happend at a mineral sands processing plant about 90 km north of Perth in the late eighties. The bases for a large kiln were being poured and I was chatting to the concrete truck driver who was operating the discharge lever on his truck. The next thing the guy started screaming and swearing clutching his hand hopping around like a mad man. When we finally got him calm enough to see what was causing the problem he showed us his hand which which was badly bruised and swelling up at an alarming rate. Something had hit him very hard between the thumb and forefinger, I remember looking around and there was only empty padocks as far as you could see and not a thing in the sky:shrug:. The only thing I could think of was something fell from space or some fool had randomly discharged a gun into the air. In any case we never found out what hit him but the damage to his hand was a lot worse then the kid in the pic below.

Mark

[Satchmo]

The passage through the atmosphere would slow such a small object down pretty quickly methinks, having almost no momentum. If the story is true the boy is lucky not to end up with a pea sized hole in the brain.

I heard a figure of something like 500 tonnes of meteorite dust falls gently on the surface of the Earth every day, but that might be apocryphal . Can remember clearly being a very nerdy kid in 3rd grade primary, pulling magnetic particles of dirt out of the soil with a magnet and selling it to other kids as little bags of 'meteorite dust'. I guess I win some points for entrepreneurial spirit anyway :lol:

[Jen]

:eyepop:The rock and the scar: Gerrit was lucky to survive his close encounter!!!!! :screwy::screwy::screwy:

WTF!!!!!!! i expected to see a huge rock :lol:
And well the mark on his hand i think he proberly done that falling of his push bike :rofl::rofl:

[JethroB76]

Other stories this issue:

"My Mums an Alien"

and

"Elvis is my accountant"

[Zaps]

Only something massive will survive atmospheric entry, and impact the Earth's surface at high velocity. Small mass objects have very little energy left once they've passed through the upper atmosphere, and therefore free-fall to the surface.

Also, it will have cooled almost completely by the time it thuds onto the ground. As stated earlier, many recent falls are discovered to be "frosty" from their passage through the very cold upper atmosphere.

For an object to hit the ground hot and hard it would need to have a large mass, in order to survive passage through the air, and an object like that won't leave only a little scar on a kid's hand!

This is all Meteoritics 101.

[leon]

Ah well it was fun to read all your answers to this mysterious incoming missile. :lol: :lol:

Leon :thumbsup:

[ngcles]

Hi All,

I think truth was the only real casualty here.

Okay, lets assume it was a meteorite (and it might be -- can't discount that) something this small (size of a split-pea) even if it were travelling at high-speed (70km/sec) in interplanetary space, just a few seconds in the Earth's upper atmosphere would have slowed it via friction to terminal velocity (at maximum say 50m/sec = about 180km/hr) and 99.9% of the energy/monentum is already lost.

It would still have been 30-40km up at that time if not more. It would then spend probably 13+ minutes falling to Earth at terminal velocity during which time it would cool considerably (its cold up there) -- probably even become cold to the touch or icy.

It would hit the person at about terminal velocity -- and a split-pea sized rock at about 50m/s would do little damage unless it his someting partcularly soft like the eye etc.

There is no way it could leave a crater 30cm diameter on a bitumen road.

It is undoubted that people have in the past been hit and injured by or even killed by meteorites -- and they too would all have been travelling at about terminal velocity. But, the difference is the mass of the object. A 2kg piece of iron/rock travelling at 180km/hr would obviously do a lot of damage to a house/car/person. A pea-sized one? No, at most a small red mark on the skin like you've been shot with a BB gun.

A "large ball of light" -- as reported by the youngster? No, that would have occurred 40-50km up and 15 minutes before it hit him. "Enormous bang like a crash of thunder"? No, sorry, 50-odd m/sec won't do that with a pea-sized object either. I'd say he's re-constructing those things.



Best,

Les D

[astroron]

I would say it is possible he could have been stung by the pea sized rock:rolleyes: but the crater in the road and the bang and bright light have probably been brought in by the media to enhance the story:screwy:
I think he maybe after his fifteen minutes of fame:lol:

[BerrieK]

And the 'meteorite' went Chk Chk BOOM!! :rofl: :rofl:

[Paul Haese]

Impact physics says that if that rock left a crater, the size of that rock would have vapourised on impact. This is not to mention that the kids arm would have nearly been ripped off from the inertia. This is a hoax. I would not believe television or radio news programs as they frequently get things wrong. You only have to watch Media Watch to confirm this idea.

Hoax it is in my estimation.

[Gallifreyboy]

It is the first of many tragic consequences to come related to mars becoming as large as the full moon ;)

[mswhin63]

The medi have this typical work ethics to sensationalise as much as possible to get a story. The story can't be printed without some truths or unable to be prosecuted.

The speed most probably was when it was in space. The rest can calculate yourselves.

Just sensationalism. Made you all look and question it.

[Ric]

:lol: :lol: Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. :rofl: :rofl:

[Enchilada]

Agreed. Your simple logic here in absolutely impeccable, though 180 km per hour is likely an overestimate! :thumbsup:
It would be, I would think, no worst than being hit on the head with a hailstone of similar size or mass. Little ouch, perhaps, but that's about all.
Just really make you wonder though. Was it the media beating up the story or a boy just looking for his fifteen minutes of fame? :shrug:

[GrahamL]

maybe theres a little truth in this .. In that this likely happened in the blink of an eye.. perhaps the footpath was always the victim and the young guy was just close by .. wonder if any meteorite collecters have had a good look around the site yet .
not that they would likely tell anyone for the moment :)

[space oddity]

Once again, the media have been duped and the public sold a story that sounds good, but is a load of c#@p . Any astro buff (so I am into meteorites) knows that a meteorite the size of a pea will have lost all of its cosmic velocity typically 10 miles above the surface and hits the ground at terminal velocity of up to about 220 m/sec . An object this small would probably have the same terminal velocity of a decent sized hailstrone and be unlikely to cause a 30 cm crater. A gash I could believe, but the crater is pure bulls%#t . Once again, as anyone should know, it takes an impactor impacting at a cosmic velocity in excess of 5km/sec to cause a crater 8 times the diameter of the impactor - caused by the vapour pressure of the instantaneous conversion of kinetic energy into thermal energy. It is too early in the morning to do the mathematics, but a quick calculation yields that the force is equivalent to hitting a cricket ball 20 metres- enough to be caught and bowled . q.i.d.

[Omaroo]

Of course they should... but no mention of asymptotic mathematics?

:rofl:

[GrahamL]

Again.. I'd start at the 30cm mark on the footpath and work back from there.. "If" something did impact there it was likely much larger than the little fragment the boy is holding .. sure the maths dosn't hold up against that tiny bit of rock but neither does the credibility of the source by which we disscredit it.. hell.. maybe someone lobbed a
firecracker over the hedge at him .. who knows;)

[dpastern]

Reminds me of a Far Side cartoon, Two guys in a wheelchair with a meteor coming down from the heavens about to smack them one. The quote from memory was something like "you got hit by lightning too!". Sadly, I can't find this image via a Google search. I don't have a scanner, so I can't scan it (I have Gary's complete collection 2 volume set - massive books).

Dave

[Terry B]

It must be true. The SMH now has it as its opening story
http://www.smh.com.au/
.;);)

[space oddity]

Brain has woken up now:thumbsup: and the mathematics is clearer, but still almost as per quick calculation. Mass of meteorite being pea sized ( 5mm diameter on some web sites) and density of 8 for a nickel-iron is 1 gram . Terminal velocity of this size/surface area object would be lucky to be 80 m/sec. A cricket ball is 160 grams. 6.3 m/sec to get same kinetic energy. This is basically a little 10 metre dolly catch- still the caght and bowled. Maximum speed really could be 800m/sec (fat chance, but would explain the sounds) would be the cricket ball wacked at 63 m/sec or 227 kmph which should just get a six. Still reckon this story should be dealt the same. Where is Roy when you need him ?(drinking?)

[Baddad]

Hi All & Terry, :)

For an explosion or impact resulting in any kind of crater in hard ground, the debri would be flying out at tremendous speed like shrapnel.:eyepop:

I find it hard to believe that a person would survive at the close proximity the article describes. The shock wave alone would have caused fatal injuries.:whistle:

If the teen was at some distance a glancing blow by debri would do the expected injury. The speed that all this occurs would be so great that he would not be able to discriminate what happened first. The impact or the injury to the hand.;)

I say that a very probable explanation is that the media has sensationalized the incident and the truth being that the teen was some safer distance from the impact area.:whistle:

Cheers Marty

[xnomad]

Other than the link coming from the Daily Mail (found it on reddit.com) what also interested me when I posted this was no mention in the German press (including their tabloids). I'm fluent in the lingo and had a look through most of the big online sites to see what sources closer to home were saying before the Daily Mail waved their wand over it, but I couldn't find a thing (although there might be now 3rd or 4th hand...)

Slashdot were discussing this article too, and someone sent a link from the BBC about a similar story a few years back, also not terribly convincing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2218755.stm