Monday, June 15, 2009

14yr OLD STRUCK BY FALLING METEOR


14-year-old Gerrit Blank was walking home from school when he saw a "ball of light" speeding from the sky headed straight for him.
According to The Telegraph, the young man was struck with a pea-sized meteor that grazed his hand before bouncing off him and striking the ground with such speed and force it left a crater a foot wide in size.
Blank said, "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," he said.
Scientific testing on the pea-sized space rock determined that it came from another galaxy.
"It's a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists," said Ansgara Kortem of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory.
"Most don't actually make it to ground level because they evaporate in the atmosphere. Of those that do get through, about six out of every seven of them land in water," he added.
Blank, a science buff said, "I am really keen on science and my teachers discovered that the fragment is really magnetic."
The chances of someone surviving a meteor strike are just one in a million, and Blank walked away with a small scar.

No comments:

Post a Comment