Hit by a Rock from Outer Space?
(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the author of several books including Backyard Ballistics, and the recently published Absinthe and Flamethrowers. Twitter: @wmgurst)
Am I being overly skeptical of this story: Boy Hit by Meteorite Traveling at 30,000 MPH?
The news photos show the meteorite to be quite small, something slightly smaller than a 22-cal bullet. But 30,000 mph is around 15 times the muzzle velocity of an M-16. I'd expect a worse outcome than a band aid and a smile.
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I dont buy it either. I heard this on a radio report this morning. You would have think it would have killed him.
Great now whenever we hear about somebody being shot on the news they'll have to remind us that "authorities have ruled out possible meteor strike." Maybe we can also have a daily meteor-threat index.
"Chances of being struck by a meteorite are around one in 100 million."
Those odds don't look very bad, either. It seems like we would here about this stuff more often if that was the case.
What really screwed with me was that they said it bounced off of his hand, and then left a foot wide crater in the ground!?! *Raises the BS flag*
Maybe the boy was from Mars?
30,000 mph BEFORE entering the Earth's atmosphere, perhaps. Much slower by the time it got to the surface. It also may have just grazed his hand before plowing in.
"Bounced" off him? No. Grazed him? Maybe.
It did leave a 3 inch scar though. Perhaps it was more akin to being grazed by a bullet? A really really fast bullet. I suspect the hand holding the little meteorite in the photograph wasn't the injured hand.
So much cynicism.
I'm thinking the meteorite hit the ground faster than sound, then a piece of rock from the ground hit the boy. Then he heard it and looked.
Foot-wide craters tend to have been previously occupied by what we could call for the moment "shrapnel", also. Maybe he just almost got hit and then ate some pieces of the sidewalk next to him. He's a kid though, everyone be quiet before he figures out he wasn't actually hit by a meteorite, cause that's awesome. Oh, but someone make sure and tell him before he gets to college and gets drunk and starts telling everyone that fucking story about the time he got hit with a meteorite.
Like what?
Random thoughts:
Bounced off, I think not. But maybe grazed in such a way that initially felt like a bounce?
Alternately, I wonder what the pressure wake following something like that would feel like if it passed close to you. And what temperature it would be - could he have been singed by a near miss? Or bumped by pressure but scarred by shrapnel from the ground?
The bandage we see on his thumb couldn't possibly be covering a three-inch scar, so he could have been clipped in a nastier way than it seems from the photos.
This thing stinks from the word go. As many others have pointed out, the object would not have been going very fast at all when it hit the ground, and would have been very unlikely to have enough mass to do much damage. Also, I'm having a real tough time buying that it caused a 1-foot crater in the tarmac after causing a 3-inch "scar" (I thought a scar was the healed remains of a laceration?) on a human hand. Sniff test = FAIL.
Does everyone need to be spoon fed?
It's just reported poorly. But its very possible debris from the impact of the crater cut his hand. The speed of the meteorite would make it nearly impossible for the boy to discern what exactly hit his hand (unless they found the meteorite in his hand).
However, It's also just as probable that the meteorite was what cut his hand -- i mean we naturally assume that his had was perpendicular (flat) to the speeding meteorite-- but this would be inaccurate and so the story seems bogus.
But his hand could very well have been at an angle slightly off from parallel to the path of the meteorite. Think of how people walk. are palms parallel to the ground? no. In conclusion the meteorite could have cut the boys hand only leaving a scratch.
Could it be a made up story? Sure, but it's not. So instead of saying that the story is completely "BS" or "bogus", try thinking.
A quote from the linked article referring to meteorites:
"Of those that do get through, about six out of every seven of them land in water."
If 71% of the earth's surface is covered by water, how do 86% of the meteorites land in it? It seems like a statistical impossibility, can anyone clarify this for me?
I'm disgusted you guys are so unread. He clearly obtained superpowers from his contact with the meteorite. And since he's obviously at a transtional state in his origin story, you have only yourselves to blame if your scorn and ridicule causes him to become a supervillain.
OK, we have wolfram|alpha:
The formula for kinetic energy is K= 1/2m * v^2
(kinetic energy = 1/2 (mass) * velocity squared)
Assuming a 2 gram meteorite (about the size of a .22 caliber), traveling at 30,000 mph, we get a kinetic energy of:
~180 kJ
Now, if you have a 75kg man traveling at 250km/h (155mph), he has the same energy.
Getting hit by a 75kg man at 155 mph would easily kill you and break many bones, most likely. Now imagine if that energy were directed at a small part of your body- say 1 sq. cm.
Draw your own conclusions.
...And what about hydrostatic shock? At 33K Mph his hand would have whipped around his body a like tether ball.
30,000mph would be a fairly average speed for a meteoroid entering the atmosphere, but smaller objects lose almost all of that velocity in the upper atmosphere because they have relatively small masses to surface area. So it would probably have 'only' been moving at a few hundred miles per hour when it hit the surface.
Kryptonite?
#1) reporter and boy don't have a clue how fast the meteorite was going when it hit anything. Reporter looked up "how fast are meteorites" on Google or something, came up with a random number, stuffed it in the article. Note that the speed quote is totally unsourced.
#2) I think it far more likely he was missed by the meteorite and hit by random crap thrown up by the impact on the road.
#3) folks assuming the hand holding the meteor with the bandaid on the thumb is the hand hit are making a HUGE leap. Kids have two hands, usually, and nowhere does it state "This is the hand that was hit!"
What we have here is a combination of bad article writing and bad science, a kid who having been at ground zero is probably not 100% clear on the sequence of events, and sprinkled with folks leaping to conclusions.
At #11 (A Nonny Moose) - Dude said "About six out of every seven" - there's a lot of approximation in that statement, I wouldn't beat him up about his precision based on that.
@ A Nonny Moose
"A quote from the linked article referring to meteorites:
"Of those that do get through, about six out of every seven of them land in water."
If 71% of the earth's surface is covered by water, how do 86% of the meteorites land in it? It seems like a statistical impossibility, can anyone clarify this for me?"
You're assuming all things that enter the earth come from every part of space equally. You're also assuming that statistics completely represent reality.
Here are some variables that are important to consider Nonny Moose. Oceans have cycles of shinking and expansion. Not every meteorite is documented. There are more active areas of space than others. The earth rotates and tilts. The data you received is dated/estimated/static (doesn't use appropriate sample of time to be accurate enough).
There are many variables to consider.
#11 A Nony Moose: I think that, for a couple of reasons, you have to disregard Antarctica as a target landmass. First of all, it's completely covered in (frozen) water. Secondly, most of the junk in the solar system, such as the planets, is roughly aligned on a plane so few meteors are going to come in at 90 degrees to the plane near the poles.
The band-aid on his thumb was from a seperate incident- he was bitten by the internet popularity bug.
Uhh- how do they know the speed (30,000mph)? It seems like an object would need a large mass to retain that speed thru the atmoshere.
Here's a better image:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1192503/Close-encounter-rock-kind-Schoolboy-survives-direct-hit-meteorite-travelling-30-000mph.html
Seems plausible. Not 30k kph, but maybe a few hundred kph after coming through the atmosphere, a graze, not a "direct hit," and a conglomerate road surface more like broken up in a foot wide circle rather than a foot wide crater. I Want To Believe....
Validation code: "14-year-old concurs" HA!
Disbelief in stones form the sky has a long and noble history. The skeptics here are in noble company. See, for example...
http://www.mysteriousnewzealand.com/featurearticles/featart_meteorites.html
President Thomas Jefferson (who had studied natural sciences) made a memorable statement. "I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven!".
Nevertheless, unless the whole thing is faked, the kid did get a hand wound at the same time a meteorite and a small crater turned up. It is pretty rare to get at all close to a meteorite landing, but a meteorite is just as likely to land close to a person as on any other point on the Earth.
Re #11's comments on the statistics - meteorites do not come at the earth equally from all angles. The great bulk of them have their orbits in in roughly the same plane as the planets. This means the meteorites are more likely to hit the equator than on the poles. The land masses on the Eaeth are not distributed evenly, and there are several wide oceans over the equator This also means if you go looking for meteorites on the poles - and people do look for them in Antarctica - then you are more likely to find the ones that come from unusual directions, and so probably come from outside the Solar System. What you find is also likely to be undisturbed, and obvious to spot against a white background.
If the meteor was traveling fast like a rifle bullet, then it might pass through something like the boy's hand and leave a neat hole. If it had hit him in the chest, you would have a neat entry wound, but probably a great, ragged hole for the exit wound as it would share its momentum with the bones and flesh. So - grazing a hand and then making a hole in the road is quite possible. This is not the same as being hit by a fat man on a motorbike, even if the momentum may be the same.
I don't have unqualified belief myself. People do fake stuff on the net. However, real stuff does still happen outside too.
If that piece he is holding in the picture is all of the meteorite, then it was traveling no more than 100 mph or so by the time it hit him, because it would have hit terminal velocity due to the small mass to surface area ratio. The only way it could have left a crater is if it were substantially larger (meter scale) and either broke up just before it hit the ground (while it still had a good amount of energy) and the boy, or if a much larger piece was what made the crater and he was hit by shrapnel. In general, small meteorites do not leave craters (I say this as a meteorite collector). It also was not "white hot" when it hit the ground unless it was a piece from a larger fragmenting stone. Travel through the lower atmosphere quickly cools meteorites. Usually pieces of 100 grams or larger are still at near space temperatures internally just after falling.
@17 the meteorite flux isn't actually that strong of a function of latitude--at the poles it is (very) roughly half that at the equator. See for instance:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1964Metic...2..271H/0000275.000.html
In fact, due to the way the Antarctic ice sheet traps, concentrates, and highlights meteorites, the vast majority of scientifically known meteorites have been recovered from Antarctica.
I was interested in this story until I saw that it was from SKY NEWS.
That's a bit like hearing that Obama and Lindsay Lohan were caught smoking crack in the oval office then noting that the source is FOX NEWS.
Oh well...
Picture of the injured hand here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_8090000/newsid_8097700/8097729.stm
1. Until the 'meteorite' has been examined by a scientist who studies meteorites and declared to be a meteorite, I doubt it's a meteorite. Random person affiliated with astronomy doesn't count.
2. I'd like to see the actual damage inflicted by the 'meteorite' on the boy -- was it a burn, a cut, or ?
3. 'White-hot fireball', eh? I call physics shenanigans; it sounds like the person reporting the incident got most of their ideas about meteorite falls from Hollywood, not real science.
Terminal velocity perhaps, but not 30,000 mph.
I'd be very skeptical as there is considerable incentive to fake a human-meteorite collision beyond a news story.
The last meteorite that came into contact with a human, an indirect impact, sold for the equivalent of several hundred thousand dollars.
Its BS. even small bullets make bigger holes than the bullet's actual size. He'd be missing a thumb.
it took 27 posts for someone to mention "terminal velocity"? wow.
@33 It didn't hit his thumb, it grazed the back of his other hand.
When I first heard this story I thought he got hit by the shock wave of the meteorite.
After I read that he got a scar, it seemed like he was hit by a piece from the crater.
However now, after seeing a photo of his scar and a photo of the crater, I believe he actually was grazed by the meteor, in such a way that the shock wave also pushed his hand out of the way enough not to inflict too much damage.
It could also be said that a graze is a bounce. What is the angle an object needs after deflecting from a surface to be considered a bounce? Is 179.98 degrees enough? Technically I think so, but graze is a better word.
Clearly the boy is not a reliable witness, not through any fault of his, but just because when a traumatic event happens to any of us it's easy to get events out of sequence that happened near-simultaneously.
Also clearly, newspapers can't be relied upon to give scientific interpretation of any event without ballsing it up. As any fule kno, small meteorites reach terminal velocity before hitting the ground; a rock the size of a pea will have quite a low terminal velocity, on the order of 100 metres per second. Still fast enough to break the skin if it hit, I imagine.
So it could have happened, but not the way it's been described.
Check out Phil Plait's thread on the subject at The Bad Astronomer blog for a quick education.
As any fule kno, quoting Nigel Molesworth is way cool : )
I can't think of anything cooler than being hit by meteorite
The story I read said "The chances of a person being hit by a meteorite are thought to be about one in a million."
ninemsn
Soon it will be one in ten
I have a micrometeorite which landed on my head several years ago burying itself in my scalp. Because of it's size I was never able to have it verified. I do however have several emails from experts whom I contacted regarding it as proof of my experience. If anyone would be interested in verifying it for me I would be extremely grateful.
Can someone who's good at statistics explain "Chances of being struck by a meteorite are around one in 100 million"? Every day? Every year? In a lifetime?
My poor math skills tell me this means that - assuming it's in a lifetime - almost 70 humans living today is at some point going to be (or has been) hit by a meteorite.
@#41: I would assume it means 1 in every 100 million meteorites that hit the Earth's surface end up hitting a person along the way. Of course, who knows what data (if any) was used to come up with that statistic. Do we even know how many people have been hit and how many meteorites hit the ground? Who keeps track of these things? If I get hit or see a meteorite, who do I go to report it to make sure it gets recorded? Chances are, if there is any data behind this at all, it's very rough.
I'm coming in late to the conversation. But take a ladder and drag a magnet through your eaves troughs: the stuff that sticks is extraterrestrial.
And it didn't blow a hole through your roof.
Ferrous material whacks The Earth with great regularity. And, yeah, physics and aerodynamics is gonna slow it down, at the price of its outside, and some light (and hella heat; which are kinda the same thing).
Sometimes what you get at the end of a descent is about the size of a grain of sand. Sometimes it's bigger. And if it has enough mass to not trade the speed of The Earth whacking into it versus its size then there's gonna be a crater somewhere.
And if you have any questions about crap floating about our local star take a look at the moon; with no atmosphere to slow stuff down.
I find it interesting that with the photo of the boy and the proposed meteorite there is no accompanying photo of the foot long crater it left behind.
@ #43
"... take a ladder and drag a magnet through your eaves troughs: the stuff that sticks is extraterrestrial."
Can't say I know much about shingles that cover the roofs of our houses, but I know that given wind, rain and whatever else, they tend to take a beating and fall apart a bit. Could the magnetic material not be from those?
The entire article on Sky News smacks of hack reporting. The quotations attributed to the boy sound made up. There is no date given for the incident. It's full of sensational, vague adjectives. Just from the reporting style alone I am skeptical.
The doesn't mean the story is 100% phony. A hack reporter can easily make even a true story sound like malarky. But has anyone seen this incident reported (not referred to, but independently reported) by any other news source?
The alleged facts seem dubious, too. Being grazed by what is virtually just a small bullet would send a person flying? The crater was a foot long, not a foot deep? A meteor would come in at a low angle rather than more-or-less vertically? Isn't that a small impact crater for even a pea-sized meteor? Would the impact really create a "large ball of light...[a] flash of light," as the quotations indicate?
Maybe so, maybe so, maybe so. But it all smells fishy to me.
The final alleged quotation is pretty funny, and I can imagine a kid or reporter saying this in real innoncence: "When it hit me it knocked my flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself in the road." As if it's surprising that a bit of skin didn't slow the thing down.
Unless I'm completely misremembering 5th grade science class, it's not a "meteorite" until it hits the ground. While it's still in space it's a "meteoroid" (or "asteroid," depending on the size,) and while it's descending through the atmosphere it's a "meteor." So the kid was almost certainly not "hit by a meteorite," unless someone picked it up and threw it at him.
exactly, I was thiking "Wouldn't his leg be ripped off? That's if he's lucky." This can't be right.
> This would mean that hundreds or thousands of us have been hit by meteorites. Another questionable thing about this story is that he heard and saw a flash before being hit. I doubt it, at that speed. Still, if analysis shows that it's a meteorite, what else could the story be? I think the kid should be designated a saint (or the Antichrist); this is obviously some sort of message from God.
This was left off my comment above: Chances of being struck by a meteorite are around one in 100 million. I was commenting on this statement of probability
I read once about a boy who had a pebble sized meteor hit the ground right between his feet. That was apparently true.. maybe it's on the intarwebs. Whatever, one thing for sure the kid is lucky he wasn't inches closer to the thing when it hit. There must be a social law about this sort of thing, that we cannot know the scientific truth of an amazing news story until a certain amount of time has passed. I'd like to see the formula for that amount of time.
If nobody thought of it yet you may call it Rosin's Law of Scientific Reporting!
Matt
Agreed, #34. I've been forced to re-evaluate my beliefs of the readership's intelligence pretty much since BoingBoing enabled the commenting system.
How embarrassing. I did not even notice that it said 30,000 mph. That kid would be a fine red mist.