Slashdot Mirror
Meteorite Crashes Through New Zealand Roof
freitasm writes "The New Zealand Herald and Stuff are reporting on a 1.3kg, four billion-year-old rock that fell through the roof of a house in suburban Auckland, New Zealand. Their insurance company will pay for the hole in the roof and couch and two holes in the ceiling. The meteorite itself, a chunk of an asteroid, could have been basketball-sized when it impacted Earth's atmosphere at 15km a second. By the time it hit the house, its velocity had probably slowed to 100-200m a second."
Meteorites are quite pricey, just put it on ebay.
Put the house on ebay too.
Now at first, you'd think having a meteorite crashing through your roof was bad.
:)
On the other hand, does this mean that these people now own the meteorite? and if so, does anyone have any idea how valuable it might be? Just courious
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
I know that the Earth's atmosphere is approximately 100 kilometres in thickness, but the idea of an object dissipating so much kinetic energy as heat is still amazing. Nonetheless, at that speed it's going at about the same speed as a bullet from a gun so I guess it's a good thing no one was there. Luckily, though, since kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity, it's a good thing it lost all but literally 0.2% of its speed.
that metorite would fetch alot of money for the house owner
The house owner said that she didn't think anyone would want to buy the rock and wanted it to stay in New Zealand / Auckland anyway. I don't think she knows how much she could get for it.
OK, the two articles contradict a bit in this area, but if the experts don't yet know where it is from (as the NZ news article says), how do they know how old it is?
I'm far from expert in this area, but if they haven't yet done the work to figure out exactly (or even roughly) where it is from, surely they couldn't have done the work to figure out its age... Or are some assumptions being made here?
I am a young earth-creationist and my conspiracy theory says that assumptions are definitely being made. The Stuff article says it is an asteroid-derived meteorite... Asteroids are said to have formed c. 4bya therefore metorite is 4 billion years old. No tests required.
Hmmm....should the insurance company really have to pay, considering the net result of the impact is that the householders will probably be able to sell it for at least $10,000? Admittedly, I have no idea how much the repairs cost, but.... well... it just seems a bit odd to pay out for an event that will actually monetarily improve the policy-holder....
According to the stuff article, the meteorite could be worth $10,000. That would be one expensive conversation piece. I'd sell it if I had an offer like that, without hesitation.
Mod parent up!
Unusual though a meteor coming through the roof is, I'm not sure it counts as "unexplained".
Well, I have to disagree with you here. Here in Australia, there is a piece of legislation called Damage by Aircraft Act 1999 [http://scaleplus.law.gov.au]. What this statute entails is that whereby any damage caused by an aircraft, the airline will automatically be liable for the damage (no questions asked), and the the damages would be sought by the insurance company on the behalf of the insured (the person being insured). However, this piece of legislation does not extend to cover non-aircraft-parts related damages. So, where there is damage to a premise caused by meteors, if the Insurer (insurance company) choses to hide behind the insurance clause of "Act of God", then the poor unlucky house-owner can't do anything about it. And will have to pay for the damages him/herself.
Now, similarly, over in New Zealand, there was this very interesting case back around '97, where a piece of scrap metal from a commercial airliner did fall onto the roof of a suburban home just after takeoff. As a result, few roof-tiles were damaged, and the New Zealand Court of Appeal held that the airline was automatically liable for any damage caused by one of its aircrafts.
So, if in the present circumstance, a piece of meteor fell out of the sky and damaged a home, who would the insurer sue on the behalf of the insured? There is no airlines involved. God? As if! In such scenario, the insured can only pray that the insurer would "out of the kindness of their hearts" allow compensation to be awarded.
There have been an increasing number of strikes over the past couple of years. Some, like this one, a half dozen instances back, are pretty darned significant. (Though, those ones suffer from a near total media black-out policy, while the smaller ones tend to get the typical, "Funny news, one in a billion, what WILL the insurance companies do, har har har! Go back to sleep, citizen" treatment). Those in power, however, are more or less aware and are preparing in their own ways. One theory suggests that the real reason behind the current world-wide military lock-down is not the 'Terrorism' bugaboo, but rather is to secure the population (and planet resources) for when things get really hairy. Look up Alternative '3' to get an idea. (Rather a cartoony distillation of the concept, but close enough to the real deal to be a relatively good primer on How Things Are.)
There appears to be a definite time-scale thingy going on here. Watch and listen. Almost everything of any significance going on in the world today is directly related to the sky falling tomorrow, so to speak. And most of it is reactionary, religion-based stupidity. We wouldn't have troops in Iraq, and Israel wouldn't be on a genocidal free-for-all if it wasn't for the 'Good' book. Ah, religion! Crack of the Masses.
Favorite news-bite of the week:
Though, don't fret. The big rocks aren't due to start whacking us for a little while yet. We'll probably get all the Harry Potter books out before. And thank goodness for that! (sic)
-FL
im suprised that term hasnt been attacked yet.
if an insurance company told me something wasnt covered because it was an act of GOD, id kindly request they prove this "GOD" existed from which this meteor was cast down...
heck, i might even sue for slander, for them implying that GOD wanted to kill me.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.