14 year old hit by 30,000 mph meteorite

Friday, June 12, 2009

14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite

A schoolboy has survived a direct hit by a meteorite after it fell to earth at 30,000mph.

Gerrit Blank survived a direct hit by a meteorite as it hurtled to Earth at more than 30,000 mph

Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky.

A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground.
The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand.

He 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 explained.

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.

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