14 Year-Old Boy Survives Close Call With Meteorite

Shut-ins have a new reason to stay at home

By Dan Smith Posted 06.12.2009 at 3:17 pm 9 Comments

Pea-Sized Meteorite Gerrit Blank shows off the tiny rock that could have killed him

Getting thwacked by a meteorite and surviving seems almost impossible, but don't tell that to 14-year-old Gerrit Blank. While walking to school in his hometown of Essen, Germany, a “ball of light” seared a 3-inch scar into his hand before hitting the ground.

Apparently, the Walter Hohmann Observatory has performed a battery of tests on the pea-sized rock and have supported the veracity of the account. If you consider how the vast majority of meteorites break up on impact with the atmosphere, and 6 out of 7 of those that survive will splashdown in water, and if this meteorite had hit him anywhere else rather than grazing he’d probably be dead, this story become all that much more incredible.

The somewhat more fishy part of the story is the Telegraph's reporting of a foot-wide crater caused on impact. Would something that small be able to generate enough force, even at super high speeds, to create such a large crater but skip off a boy's hand with little more than a scratch?

[The Daily Telegraph]

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9 Comments

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mcoup

06/13/09 at 2:23 am

lucky kid

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Dane619

06/13/09 at 5:13 pm

that's cool! he is lucky!

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extremechiton

06/14/09 at 1:32 pm

ouch

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dorfgog

06/14/09 at 8:09 pm

This is a science magazine? This is so obviously a hoax! Meteorites ablate to such an extent that by 9-12 miles altitude they have cooled to ambient temperature and have slowed to 4500-9000 mph. After that they continue to decelerate to terminal velocity, about 200 mph for a pea-sized rock. There would be no blazing flash of light or earth-shattering kaboom and no crater.

Where are all the other witnesses to this event? No one else saw and heard it? For crying out loud, do some research before spreading this crap.

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Blinding Light64

from cairo, N.Y.

06/15/09 at 2:36 pm

This Type of event is very unusual yes but it could still happen, now when it comes to this meteorite. If it were comprised of a metal that could withstand the immense heat from the atmosphere then it could be possible that what this kid was saying is in fact the truth but, based on scientific records and past knowledge it highly unlikely that this could have transpired as the boy had said.

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highdobb

06/15/09 at 7:01 pm

First thing I would ask this kid is how he knew the pea sized chunk he recovered was the thing that hit him. Especially if this thing "caused a foot wide crater," he just knew exactly which piece in the rubble was responsible for it? If a "team" recovered it fine, where's this crater then?

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bdhoro87

from coral gables, fl

06/15/09 at 7:49 pm

This article points out the sketchiness of the story so dorfgog idk what you're so upset about, even though I don't believe this kid for a minute either.

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ford2go

06/17/09 at 1:42 am

I don't debate the physics, but there are some other things to consider.

1. Somehow the boy got a piece of a meteor -- this has apparently been verified by a reputable agency
2. Somehow he got a scar

Don't know about the crater.

It is possible that the object in question was originally much larger ('massier'), and burned up as it went through the atmosphere. In that case, the (de)acceleration would have been less pronounced.

No idea if the story is true or not, but the analysis given does not conclusively disprove it.

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