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I was Hit by a Meteorite!

A

Anonymous

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Well ... almost. I was standing at a bus stop last week when something clicked sharply on the plastic roof of a bus shelter. Everyone looked up, then down. A rock fell just next to my feet. Nobody stood up from the bench or was particularly interested to come and take a look, so I picked it up and brought home.

A mate of mine works at a medical sterilization facility where they use accelerators so he measured it to see if it was radioactive - it was not.

We thought about a kid with a slingshot but the bus stop is in an industrial area, just near a dairy plant, and there's a highway and old rail tracks. The time was 9:30 am, so the kids were (supposedly) at school. Who knows, though.

Sorry, I can't post larger pictures because of file size restrictions, but even without a magnifying glass you can see bright silvery speckles embedded in it.
 
Umm - it looks like a piece of tarmac to me. Could have been thrown up by a tyre.
 
No way, SM - the highway is too far off, maybe half a mile, behind the tracks, can be heard but not seen. The bus loop was empty, no buses or cars in the vicinity.

And it's quite heavy, by the way. Looks just like an ordinary rock, I agree, but it fell down from the sky, not flew into the roof sideways.
 
Stuff and Nonsense !!!

Everyone know rocks don't fall from the sky !!!

Be off with ye, heretic !!!
 
Strange that it was cool to the touch when you picked it up.
 
fLeebLe: does it stick to a magnet?

It does!!!!!!!!! Not as strongly as two magnets would, but a similar-sized magnet did get attached to it. I can't believe neither myself nor my buddy haven't thought of trying a magnet!
Hey, Fortean scientists, is this a definitive proof it came from the outer space?

As to the cool to the touch part, Mythopoeika, I used a folded paper towel to pick it up a few of which I always carry around in my bag (just in case), so I couldn't say. But it had lain there for a couple of minutes while everyone at the stop was making up their mind.
 
apparently if it sticks to a magnet it is a good sign that it may be a meteorite :)
 
yeah, i don't know.

wouldn't one that small be a little more burned up?
i mean,if it is what was left of a slighty larger meteorite, it should look a little more rounded,melted or something. sounds like a squirell or bird dropped it after realizing it wasn't edible.

if not, let's hope you don't touch it. remember what happened to stephen king's hillbilly character in creepshow after touching the meteor? makes me not want to touch any foriegn object.
 
travbot: remember what happened to stephen king's hillbilly character in creepshow after touching the meteor? makes me not want to touch any foriegn object.

What happened to him? And who's Stephen King? :confused:
 
Stephen King: Famous American writer of horror stories.

"Just another messy day in paradise":

We have a similar saying in Hawaii, but it uses a stronger word than "messy".
 
Sorry, nshippen, I was kidding. I know who Stephen King is, it's just I've never been interested enough to read any of his writings - suffices to look at the guy's face to be freaked out. He seems to be completely freaked out himself by what he wrote. ;)

Wombat, thanks for the link. It does look like a tektite but the definition of a tektite is "a small roundish glassy body of unknown origin occurring in various parts of the earth". My rock can beat most of these characteristics: it's jagged (with quite sharp edges), not roundish; it's not glassy; it did not occur naturally, but rather supernaturally :D, and finally, it's origin is known - bus-shelter-roof. :D Most closely it resembles a piece of grey granite but it also has some tiny sparkly and rusty (iron) speckles.
 
Tektites are believed to be formed from the strike point of a really hot meteorite, with a little bit of the meteorite melted in. And they are only found in certain areas, you must need a certain type of soil or something.

The fact that it is magnetic doesn't necessarily mean it is a meteorite. Haematite, magnetite and ilmanite are all magnetic to some extent and all grey and slightly shiny. They may also have the rusty bits in due to the iron.

I agree with Travbot that it ought to look more sort of melty if it were a meteorite.

Here is a lodestone a form of magnetite. Try sticking some paperclips to your stone and see what happens.
 
That rock reminds me of the ballast they lay around railway line sleepers and that we used to throw at people waiting in bus shelters when we where kids bunking off school.

If it where a meteorite why has it got those sharp edges?, I would have thought burning through the atmosphere would have rounded it out somewhat?
 
Thanks for the "Meteorites for Dummies" ws, Min. I went through all the steps.
It says: "About 90% of meteorites will attract a magnet. This is true for iron meteorites and for stone meteorites." Mine is more on the stone side and probably has very little iron because it only attracts a small round fridge magnet (makes it roll back and forth) and a square fridge magnet (makes it topple). I haven't tried any paperclips so far - those that I have are aluminum.
"Fusion crust is a thin (1 to 2 mm) coating of glass that covers the outside of a freshly fallen meteorite. It is like the glaze on ceramic ware. Usually, fusion crust is black because of iron in the meteorite." - I studied it in the bright sun and it has uneven black glaze on about 70% of the surface. Hard to see on these photos, though.
"Native iron is iron metal--bright silver-colored" - check.
"Rust" - check.
Very heavy for its size.
So it looks like it is. Especially if you add the fact that three of four students sitting with me at the bus stop saw it drop. I also spotted Nambo hiding behind a coconut tree. ;)
 
Just a better picture I just took under a lamp.

Forgot to mention: I've replaced a photo on Page 1 with a much clearer one. (rock3)
 
I feel sorry for the poor little thing!
Can you imagine the crushing disapointment of floating through the icy cold void for perhaps billions of years in the hope of something interesting happening but you fall to Earth in a bus stop?
This mundane wooden spoon of fate could only be matched in its capacity to disappoint by knowing that you'll have to wait another eon to go any further.
Bless it.
 
While surf fishing I once got hit in the ear with seagull dung.........
 
Was there a hole in the roof of the bus stop? or did it just hit the edge and bounce off?

BTW, the pics don't seem to be here any longer. Is it because the post is over a year old? I've noticed this on other posts, that there aren't pics even though it says there are. I'm still a newbie at message boards so if this is the case, sorry for my ignorance. :p
 
Schoolboy survives direct hit by meteorite travelling at 30,000mph
By Eddie Wrenn
Last updated at 11:19 AM on 12th June 2009

The odds of it happening are astronomical, but not impossible, as one schoolboy found out when he was struck by a passing meteorite.
The rock flew down from space at speeds of 30,000mph, and grazed past 14-year-old Gerrit Blank as he made his way to school.
The meteorite continued on before ending its billion-year intergalactic journey on the pavement, leaving a smoking, foot-wide crater.
Gerrit was left with a scar on his hand, making him one of only a handful of people to have been struck directly by a meteorite.

The student, from Essen, Germany, 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 rock would originally have been a lot larger, but would have burned up in the atmosphere as it fell to Earth. Most 'shooting stars' burn up completely before they hit the ground.
Experts are now examining the pea-sized meteorite to discover its origins. Most meteorites date back to the formation of the solar system 4.55billion years ago.

The odds of being hit by a meteorite are said to be one in a 100million. There is not a confirmed fatality from a direct hit before, although there are many reported cases of animals being killed by an impact.
One woman in Alabama, America, was injured as she lay asleep in bed in 1954. The 4kg meteorite struck her after smashing through her roof.
A monk is said to have been killed by a meteorite in Milan in 1650 and two sailors in Sweden were reportedly killed by one while sailing in 1674.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... 00mph.html
 
With those sort of odds, he couldn't be blamed if he thought that the universe or whatever higher powers there are had it in for him personally!
 
A little more..
Scientists are now studying the pea-sized meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany.

"I am really keen on science and my teachers discovered that the fragment is really magnetic," said Gerrit.

Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space.

Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: "It's a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists.

"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.

The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, USA, in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandte ... orite.html
Click to expand...
 
If this was a Marvel Comic, he'd start to develop superpowers...
 
Timble2 said:
If this was a Marvel Comic, he'd start to develop superpowers...
Click to expand...

If this was Creepshow, he'd start turning into vegetation...
 
gncxx said:
Timble2 said:
If this was a Marvel Comic, he'd start to develop superpowers...
Click to expand...

If this was Creepshow, he'd start turning into vegetation...
Click to expand...
Was that the story starring a very hammy Stephen King? Wasn't it based on, 'The Color Out of Space', by HP Lovecraft?
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
gncxx said:
Timble2 said:
If this was a Marvel Comic, he'd start to develop superpowers...
Click to expand...

If this was Creepshow, he'd start turning into vegetation...
Click to expand...
Was that the story starring a very hammy Stephen King? Wasn't it based on, 'The Color Out of Space', by HP Lovecraft?
Click to expand...

Yes, and pretty much, although Lovecraft foolishly forgot to write in some broad hillbilly comedy into his version.
 
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