Slashdot Mirror
14-Year-Old Boy Smote By Meteorite
eldavojohn writes "Winning the lottery requires incredible luck and one in a million odds. So does getting hit by a falling space rock. A 14-year-old German boy was granted a three-inch scar by the gods. A pea-sized meteorite smote young Gerrit Blank's hand before leaving a foot-sized crater on the road. The boy's account: '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.' Curiously, the rock was magnetic, and tests were done to verify it is extraterrestrial. The Telegraph notes the only other recorded event of a meteorite striking a person was 'in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.' Space.com lists a few more anomalies and we discussed the probability of these things downing aircraft recently."
No photos of any wound, but fast enough to bury in the ground or leave a foot long mark on the ground? Loud noise? Many small meteors are traveling quite slowly by time they reach the surface. Small meteorites are quite easy to obtain. Apparently this is a photo of the rock. Is that the 3-inch scar? Just dunno...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/12/a-boy-claims-he-was-hit-by-a-meteorite/
Short story is that it's possible (although not as presented in the media right now), but be skeptical.
Correct! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/picturesoftheday/5513461/Pictures-of-the-day-12-June-2009.html
... unless the boy as doing the smiting.
How the [File System Check] does stupidity of this level get modded up?
As much as I hate replying (twice!) to AC's, I feel compelled to go to the trouble of a Google search.
Meteorite Myths (cribbed in turn from space.com, apparently)
"All of these things together mean that not only is the rock not hot when it hits the ground, it can actually be very cold. Some meteorites (what a meteoroid is called after it impacts) have actually been found covered in frost!"
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Much better; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1192503/Close-encounter-rock-kind-Schoolboy-survives-direct-hit-meteorite-travelling-30-000mph.html/
If it were simply dropped within the atmosphere with no impetus, yes - it'd hit terminal velocity.
But if it actually came from space, it could have been traveling hellaciously fast, been slowed down somewhat by the atmosphere, but by no means just down to whatever terminal velocity would be.
Think about it this way - if you fire a gun from the top of a building, the bullet would still hit faster than terminal velocity because it had something propelling it. Same for a meteorite.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
It wasn't pea-sized the whole way down. It was probably quite a bit bigger than that initially (it would have to be to make it all the way to the surface). That's just the size it had been burned down to by the time it reached ground. It must have been moving pretty damn fast.
Well, and I don't know where the details in TFA here posted came from. Actually, the german article states some facts differently (I'll try a translation, umlauts were replaced by me, because /. sucks at Unicode):
"Erst habe ich nur einen grossen, weissen Lichtkegel gesehen. Meine Hand hat weh getan, dann hat es geknallt."
"First I saw only a big, white cone of light. My hand hurt, then there was a bang."
"Nachdem ich das weisse Licht gesehen habe, habe ich an meiner Hand etwas gespuert. Ich denke, dass mich der Meteorit gestreift hat. Vielleicht war es aber auch nur die Hitze", berichtet er und zeigt den Ruecken seiner linken Hand. Die rund zehn Zentimeter lange Brandwunde ueberdeckt bereits eine Kruste. "Das Geraeusch, das folgte, klang wie das Reissen einer Steinplatte und war ziemlich laut", erinnert sich Gerrit und deutet auf den kleinen Kreis aufgeplatzten Asphalts zu seinen Fuessen.
"After I saw the white light, I felt something at my hand. I think, the meteorite streaked me. But maybe it was only the heat." he reported and shows the back of his left hand. A brand around 10 centimeters long is already covered by an eschar. "The sound that followed, sounded like a paver being ripped apart and it was pretty loud", he comemorates and points to a small circle of burst open bitumen by his feet.
END OF TRANSLATION
There's also a picture where one can see the "crater" in front: http://www.derwesten.de/nachrichten/staedte/essen/2009/6/10/news-122286237/imageshow.html?resourceId=picture23923142 (the caption reads: "Gerrit Blank shows his brand and the meteorite that streaked him, while it was falling, near the "crater".