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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."
Great story to tell your parents after you've burned yourself with the crack pipe.
Why not a picture of his hand?
FML.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"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."
Wow, there was a 99.9999% of it killing him!
Seriously, surely the odds of being struck are much smaller than one in a million? Isn't it closer to one in a few billion, since there's a population of 6 billion and only 2 occurrences?
Clearly, this kid is all set to gain numerous super-powers from his encounter.
the gods or whatever clearly hate this kid, maybe we should take the hint and finish him off
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
What is more amazing is that it struck a 14-year-old German. I didn't think these things existed anymore; I thought all Germans were over 40 by now.
...and that meteorite is the best he can do?
I would've expected a press conference, at least...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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...
FTA: "A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground."
First, meteors aren't hot. Second, if a "pea-sized piece of rock" is going fast enough to make "a foot wide crater in the ground," it's not going to be "bouncing off" shit, least of all this kid's hand. It would tear through him like a shotgun slug. Was the kid's hand blown off? No? Then it didn't leave a fucking crater in the ground either. How about some photographs? Oh, there are none? Hmmm.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
The injury was more likely from the debris kicked up from the impact of the meteor on the ground than the meteor directly striking him on the hand.
This guy now automatically wins all bar scar-comparing competitions (when he's allowed to go in a bar, that is).
See this? My cat attacked me, gashed my wrist all the way to the bone.
That's nothing. Look here, rabid racoon, I had to be quarantined for days.
Child's play. Look at this, shot myself with a nail gun, stumbled back and stepped on a rake.
Oh yeah? Well God shot me with a meteorite.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
For everyone who can't see it because the image was cropped, I can confirm that the scar is indeed shaped exactly like a lightning bolt. In line with the prophecy from 1979 that states that "the boy who lived" with "lightning in his hand" may one day confront and defeat the terrifying Asteroid menace, I believe we have finally found our champion, the one who finally end the Asteroid threat to all of Earth once and for all. But we'll have to work hard to keep more Asteroids from hitting him in the meantime... are we up to it? I believe so. It is - he is... perhaps our greatest hope.
Curiously, a British girl was hit in the foot by a meteorite a few years ago. Is this tit for tat in a new grudge war between the two rivals?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
... unless the boy as doing the smiting.
Well, the "meteorite" was magnetic, which implies either a high iron content or a high nickel content. Either one is shiny. Surely the sun reflecting off the "meteorite" could explain the "streak of light".
Seriousoy, though... can you please do the calculation that proves for a meteor of some diameter N, and some density M, it is impossible for the meteor to enter the atmosphere at some speed O, at an angle P, that would result in the meteorite not being cool to the touch at elevation Q? Please account for atmospheric and local weather conditions. Or, you could link to a source with the required info.
See, here's the thing... most meteors enter the atmosphere obliquely, which results in a long path of travel before touchdown (if they don't burn up completely). But just assume that it's possible for a meteor to not hit obliquiely (and factoring in rotation, etc)... surely it is possible for a meteor of sufficient density and size to be traveling at higher than terminal velocity, and above normal temperature, when it hits the surface (or a teen standing on the surface).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Another example, shoot a bullet straight up*...
Are you just trying to see how many of the dumber /.ers you can kill? Cause I hear you can get a higher % return at digg.
(ack the low blow for comedy's sake)
2 people hit out of 6 billion in the world, so odds are 1 in 3 billion or the PDOOMA 1 in 1 million FTA
what are the odds that either the androgynous boy or some reporter made the whole thing up?
So now what? random genetic mutations? Green Skin? Red Laser Shooting Eyes?
Or maybe something cool like a sex hungry space alien ala Species?
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
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/
...the dog ate my homework was good enough!
You can't count with population of 6 billion. About 1.3 of that live in India. Have you ever been to the country's poor areas (=which is nearly all of it). I've only traveled once through the country and most of that time in a train but I feel confident to say that if someone gets hit by a small meteor there, it won't get reported and confirmed.
Same is true for chine which also has over a billion people. And the poor parts of Africa... And I would guess that the same stands even for a lot of South America and Mexico...
Hell, the amount of people among which such events would likely be reported is probably closer to a billion. And even among them, only those identified as meteor strikes. I wouldn't be surprised if a few would just go "Where the hell did that come from?! WHICH ONE OF YOU FUCKERS THREW A ROCK AT ME?!"
Yeah, one in a million sounds still way of but 2 reported incidents in six billion is far, far away from two incidents in six billion.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/
http://forums.randi.org/register.php?referrerid=7
it seems the meteorite has made him grow to 4-5 times the size of cars next to him
i saw this in a 1950s science documentary involving a woman who grew 50 feet tall and deranged from this sort of tragic accident
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Clearly he is some sort of Cylon or Terminator as the magnetic rock was attracted to him...
Curiously it his his hand, which means either Luke Skywalker or a certain state alchemist...
So I am a bit torn as to if we should mob him or not. Better burn him just to be sure. Probably a witch anyway.
Also if he was like Magneto, he would probably make the meteor not hit him I would guess. Which would make him sort sort of Anti-Magneto, his arch nemesis. Which ironically are quite common and Magneto doesn't really like them either. Unless you are in a alternative universe, in which case the opposite would be true.
Its Friday and I am ready to go home now... :)
Pea-sized? That's about 9mm or even larger depending upon the cultivar. I've seen peas the size of .50 caliber rounds (about 12.7mm) and at the 30,000mph in TFAHL that would not only rip the boy's hand off but probably break the bones up to his elbow from the shock. Even at 400mph it would do way more than that. Also, to be pea-sized and make a crater that large, it would have to have more mass than it should have since it's supposedly composed of primarily ferrous material.
And I doubt 30,000MPH. Maybe 250 at best.
But this *IS* the Telegraph. Not exactly a reliable source of news. I'm surprised this actually made it here.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
He gets his own movie, Gerite Point Blank
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
When something goes supersonic it gets worse and worse at transferring heat to the air molecules, which is a big problem for supersonic craft such as the SR-71 Blackbird - one reason is black is to maximize heat transfer by radiation.
Meteorites which are ice cold when they hit were slowed down below ~330m/s high in the atmosphere and thus cooled down, the hot ones are the fast ones.
how many people consider asteroids a real threat to humankind? Granted, two human occurrences of extraterrestrial pebbles are not cause for concern but, what about when the pebble turns out to be a 200m rock?
It won't be Aphophis, most likely, but it will happen one day.
Aeroespacio.org
His story might not be *true*, but.. um.. there's still the crater in the ground. I don't know how he would have been able to fake that. And the rock is reportedly actually from space. Even harder to fake. The odds of him just happening to find this while doing something he shouldn't have been that caused a scar, and deciding to blame it on this meteorite, are probably as small as him getting hit by it.
or maybe I'm just the only ID10T
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The meteor bounced off his hand then made a foot-wide crater in the road? Wow! He's got tough hands!
Oh, wait... Maybe the injury to his hand was caused by a debris fragment from the road impact. That would actually make sense.
So let me get this straight: a meteor strikes a boy's hand, bounces off, and then impacts the ground with enough force to make a 1 ft crater in the ground, and a noise loud enough to leave his ears ringing for hours.
Somehow, I think any object with enough kinetic energy to do that kind of damage to the road would have completely obliterated a soft, fleshy hand, or at least blown clear through it. But just leaving a 3 inch scar and bouncing off, yet packing enough force to knock him to the ground? No way. Not unless this kid is Iron Man.
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".
Terminal velocity is somewhat of a red-herring here. If you were to drop a meteorite from a standing start from a high enough point (lets say you're in a hot air balloon), then terminal velocity is the asymptotic speed that the meteorite would approach as the acceleration due to gravity is cancelled out by air-resistance. But an actual meteorite doesn't hit the ground from a standing start. It could have been travelling at many times the speed of sound when it entered the atmosphere. Sure, its trip through the atmosphere would have slowed it down a little, but there's no guarantee that it would have dropped to terminal velocity before striking the ground. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of meteorites leaving impact craters that are many times their size. I'm no expert, but I presume that they would also have had to have been travelling faster than terminal velocity in order to leave such marks on the ground. (Hmm, it's late - anyone know what tense I used in my last sentence? I sure don't!)
So, that's twice in one century. Maybe there's too many people on the planet.
Pour gin over space rocks, shake at terminal velocity, voilÃ, one more drink to compete with the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.
The probability of somebody lying about a meteor strike is much, much higher than the probability of somebody actually being struck by a meteor.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.