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Meteorite Strike Kills Man In India

Posted by timothy on from the as-go-ways-to-die dept.

knwny writes: In what is believed to be the first such incident in modern times, a meteorite strike in India killed a man and injured three others. According to police sources, a loud blast was heard at the site of the strike which also left a four-feet deep crater. Preliminary investigation by forensic and bomb experts showed no sign of any explosive substance at the scene. The second link has a picture of the supposed crater which I believe will interest Slashdotters with experience in this area.

12 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. It could have been worse... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

    A cow might have died.

    1. Re:It could have been worse... by SQLGuru · · Score: 4, Funny

      That would have been a meaty-orite......

  2. Isn't that a level 9 spell? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Funny

    >> a meteorite strike in India killed a man and injured three others

    Isn't that a level 9 spell? Were there any related "prismatic", er, rainbow attacks in the area too?

  3. Sad but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's sad for his family and condolences. But man, what a unique way to go! Probably high up on my list of ways to go. No pain, no fear, just one minute you're there and the next your in the history books for being one of the few to be taken out by a meteorite.

  4. Re: Going to become more common. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    You can do everyone one a favor and make it 7 billion - 1.

  5. Wrong image in second link? by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Informative

    CNN shows a roped off area in what appears to be a small thicket, while the second link shows a crater in a rice paddy. If you read the article in the second link, the 4th paragraph mentions another incident believed to be a meteorite struck a rice paddy on Jan 26. So the caption on that image is probably incorrect.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    1. Re:Wrong image in second link? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah it looks like the image is from the first strike, not the second. It says the guy who was killed was going to a water tank to drink and that it damaged the water tank and several vehicles. That doesn't sound like something that landed in the middle of a rice paddy.

      What I find strange is that there was a strike on Jan. 26th, and so a scientist was camping in the area, and then another strike in the same area only a couple weeks later. What are the odds of that?

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    2. Re:Wrong image in second link? by lazarus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Bad Astronomy talks about the odds of getting killed by one as 1:700,000. But this includes extinction events, etc. You are more likely to die by meteorite than terrorist apparently.

      I couldn't find any odds of getting hit by one, never mind two falling in the same area within the space of a couple of weeks, but I think it would be much lower than getting hit by lightning (1:960,000). About 500 meteorites hit the earth each year. There are 138 million lightning strikes per year. So, not accounting for population density, I would estimate that your odds of getting hit by a meteorite is 1:265,000,000,000 (1 in 265 billion).

      Roughly.

      --
      I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
    3. Re:Wrong image in second link? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is what happens when an object breaks up and the pieces strike a planet, you get a line of impacts. If these fragments both came from the same object then they would have to be very far apart, so the breakup of the object would have happened long ago, and even so they still probably wouldn't strike in the same place. The Earth is not stationary, the equator is rotating at around 1,000 miles per hour and the planet is moving through space at 67,000 miles per hour. So for 2 impact events that occur 11 days apart, you're talking about the earth moving over 17 million miles through space during that time and completing around 11 rotations. If you think that these fragments came from the same object then you're talking about something that must have been in geosynchronous orbit, where the object was orbiting the planet roughly above the area where they came down (probably a little "farther"), and it took one fragment 11 days longer than the other to fall from orbit. They've already identified rocks as belonging to the object that fell, so we aren't talking about man-made space junk, and there aren't any rocky satellites in geosynchronous orbit. In fact, the only rocky satellite in orbit around the planet is the moon, and it is most definitely not in a geosynchronous orbit. The odds are anything but "very high".

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      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  6. I have a theory by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Was he wearing a dinosaur suit, by chance?

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  7. that explains it by sunking2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Was wondering why I didn't receive a call back from Bob in customer service.

  8. Actually, the picture is of the first crater... by rgbatduke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...as one can easily see. This is a crater in the middle of a paddy field. The regular array of tufts of greener is planted rice. The crater is order of a meter across or maybe a bit less (scale from the array of rice plants) and is formed in soft paddy mud that has had all of the rocks and solid material removed over as many as hundreds of years. This strike didn't kill anyone.

    From the article, the second strike was near a tank -- which is basically a large open well sometimes surrounded by or even formed out of stone or masonry, typically NOT located in the middle of a muddy, flooded rice paddy -- injured several people and killed one, which means that it had more energy than the rice paddy strike and likely hit ground solid enough to cause significant shrapnel. A rice paddy is pretty close to a perfect environment to NOT cause a lot of shrapnel.

    Just sayin'. I'm guessing the newspaper had a stock photo of the first hit and figured most people would be too ignorant to detect the "error" and wanted to be first to press to get wider reading and didn't wait on somebody going to photograph the actual crater.

    rgb

    --
    Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.