Five said hurt as meteorite crashes

[acidosmosis]

BHUBANESWAR, India (AFP) - Five people were injured and two houses gutted when a meteorite crashed to earth in eastern India after panicking hundreds of villagers as it shot across the sky, reports and residents said.

The meteorite crashed Saturday in a remote village near the Bay of Bengal in the state of Orissa, local media said, adding five people were sent to hospital with injuries.

The provincial revenue minister, Biswa Bhusan Harichandan, said authorities were waiting for more concrete information about damages or casualties.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../20030928/sc_afp/india_meteorite_030928195724

That is pretty scary and cool at the same time. I am sure we all know that one day a "global killer" will strike earth. Hopefully I am here when it does :-D

 

[poertner_1274]

I just read something about this a few minutes ago. That is absolutely crazy. I think it would be incredible to see one of those crashing across the sky.

 

[Rick]

Just about anything dropping at 100,000mph is bound to cause some damage.

I wonder what the statistical chances for being hit by a meteorite are... Better than lightning?

 

[SNGX1275]

Would make life a bit more interesting if these type of things happened more often. heh.

 

[Nic]

Meteorites falling to Earth are supposed to be a good omen. The black stone held sacred by Moslems is thought to be from a meteorite. :=).

 

[acidosmosis]

You can also imagine that the particle that hit was pretty small. Probably about 1/100th of an inch to an inch? That is just my guess though. Imagine if it had been a foot wide, that would have caused a LOT of damage and put a pretty big crater in the earth. It probably started out a lot larger but by time it hit I guess it was within the size I just mentioned. My guess would be if it was the size of a baseball the crater would be around 15 feet wide. Just a guess though.

 

[agissi]

Originally posted by acidosmosis
It probably started out a lot larger but by time it hit I guess it was within the size I just mentioned.

They start out a LOT bigger. When they come through the atmosphere, they start to burn up due to friction. Most are too small, and competely burn up as they enter the atmosphere. This one was big enough to last.. I wonder how big it actually was when it got past our atmosphere

 

[acidosmosis]

I would imagine as soon as it hits the atmosphere it breaks up. I know they do break up as they pass through the atmosphere, but you would think hitting the atmosphere would be almost like hitting a brick wall, mainly due to coming from space where there is no real friction such as air then colliding with the air and pressure in our atmosphere at super high speeds would have an astounding effect on a object like this.