Meteorite Hits Girl 505
redcliffe writes "The BBC has a story about a 14 year old North Yorkshire girl who was hit, on the foot, by a meteorite. Where's Bruce Willis when you need him?" The young Miss Carlton notes: "This does not happen that often in Northallerton"; no doubt the City of York is where most meteorites land.
can she sue someone? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:can she sue someone? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:can she sue someone? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:can she sue someone? (Score:2)
Re:can she sue someone? (Score:5, Funny)
Marriage in Heaven
eyesbright@aol.comedienne (Randy Russell)
AOL http://www.aol.com
(chuckle, heard it)
On their way to get married, a young couple are involved in a fatal car accident. The couple find themselves sitting outside the Pearly Gates waiting for St. Peter to process them into Heaven.
While waiting, they begin to wonder: Could they possibly get married in Heaven? When St. Peter shows up, they asked him. St. Peter says, "I don't know. This is the first time anyone has asked. Let me go find out," and he leaves.
The couple sat and waited for an answer. . . . for a couple of months. While they waited, they discussed that IF they were allowed to get married in Heaven, SHOULD they get married, what with the eternal aspect of it all.
"What if it doesn't work?" they wondered, "Are we stuck together FOREVER?"
After yet another month, St. Peter finally returns, looking somewhat bedraggled. "Yes," he informs the couple, "you CAN get married in Heaven."
"Great!" said the couple, "But we were just wondering, what if things don't work out? Could we also get a divorce in Heaven?"
St. Peter, red-faced with anger, slams his clipboard to the ground.
"What's wrong?" asked the frightened couple.
"OH, COME ON!!" St. Peter shouts, "It took me three months to find a priest up here! Do you have ANY idea how long it'll take me to find a lawyer?"
Re:can she sue someone? (Score:2)
I dunno, but it would probably take almost as long as it would to find a lawyer in heaven ;-) I mean really, I bet the firewall at the pearly gates blocks all .ho domains.
Re:can she sue someone? (Score:3, Funny)
Sue that butterly which flapped it's wings a million years ago.
Re:can she sue someone? (Score:2)
Is anyone at home and so can look up the reference?
Transcript of article.... (Score:4, Funny)
she was walking all alone
down the street in the alley
her name was sally
she never saw it
when she was hit by space junk
in new york miami beach
heavy metal fell in cuba
angola saudi arabia
on xmas eve said norad
a soviet sputnik hit africa
india venezuela (in texas kansas)
it's falling fast peru too
it keeps coming
and now i'm mad about space junk
i'm all burned out about space junk
oooh walk & talk about space junk
it smashed my baby's head
and now my sally's dead
No. Not really. Those are the lyrics to the Devo song, "Space Junk".
Re:Transcript of article.... (Score:2)
God, I miss the 90s.
And she didn't move??? (Score:5, Funny)
And it hit her foot. Man, I see an unidentified object coming at me from above roof height and I'm getting out of the way. I'll figure out what it is later.
But then I guess no one would write about that...
Re:And she didn't move??? (Score:3, Informative)
And it's not surprising that her leg wasn't reduced to "smoldering remains." No doubt the meteorite did get quite hot on the upper atmosphere, but by the time it got nearer ground level (and went through England's usual cloud cover
Let's have a count... (Score:5, Funny)
- Mozilla 1.0 released
- A story on Slashdot about how a guy switched from Linux back to Windows, XP no less
- I got a girlfriend. (I'm man enough to admit that's not easy when you play with computers for a living)
- Nintendo launch two game systems plus a highly anticipated title ON TIME
- A girl getting hit by a meteorite
Yeesh. What a year.
How to get your photo in the news (Score:5, Funny)
2. Say it's a meteorite that hit you on the foot.
3. BBC believes you, publishes goofy photo of you holding your "meteorite"
4. ???
5. Profit
Alternately, all your beowulf cluster of meteorite are belong to us.
Yeah, that should about cover it.
Re:How to get your photo in the news (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How to get your photo in the news (Score:2, Funny)
1. Get a rock
2. Say it's a meteorite that hit you on the foot.
3. BBC believes you, publishes goofy photo of you holding your "meteorite"
4. ???
5. Profit
Other Nigh-infinitely Rare Occurances... (Score:4, Funny)
Not the first time . . . (Score:2)
I wonder if this is like me holding quarters about a lighter for 30 seconds and throwing them in a crowd. . . not that I've ever done that. .
I find it kinda cool that nobody (*in recorded history*) has ever been killed by a meteorite.
If you're bored,
http://www.brudirect.com/LighterSide/
Re:Not the first time . . . (Score:2)
In other weird stuff in the sky, a few years ago I happened to see an incoming meteor (magnesium by the brilliance) that in the few seconds it was visible, was large enough to show a disk to the naked eye, and it lit up the landscape about the same as would a major lightning strike. Good thing it burned up on the way down
BTW, there've been a few cases of people who fell off a building, and at least one who fell out of an airplane, and survived a long fall with minimal injuries. It's a bird.. it's a plane... *splat*
Fireball (Score:2)
Re:Not the first time . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
I always thought that too, but while googling for a picture of the Peekskill Meteorite car [nyrockman.com], I stumbled on this page [branchmeteorites.com], which shows at least three separate incidents where a person was killed by a meteorite. None have happened recently, though.
Re:Not the first time . . . (Score:2)
September 5, 1907 Hsin-p ai Wei, Weng-li, China A whole family was reportedly crushed by a meteorite. Now, if that isn't bad luck. Besides how friggin big was the damn thing? A whole family?
Have you hugged your air today? (Score:2)
It is probably hard to say without more analysis of that particular rock. The atmosphere slows rocks down. How much the atmosphere slowed it depends on a lot of factors like its orginal speed, angle of entry, composition, shape, etc.
It is possible that it was falling at a regular "dropping" velocity once slowed to the minimum for the atmospheric drag. IOW, lost almost all of its "space" velocity.
Gotta love our atmosphere.
Terminal velocity (Score:3, Informative)
Terminal velocity for an average human body is only about 110 mi/h, or about 175 km/h, give or take a few ds/dt. Maybe top off at 200 mi/h if you really try.
A meteorite might go a bit faster, provided it is somewhat round. It will also be rather hot due to friction.
I thought I'd share this with you.
Cheers!
E
Re:Terminal velocity (Score:2)
Not necessarily. Gravitational pull is proportional to mass, drag is proportional to area. Mass grows at 3rd power, area at 2nd power. Therefore smaller objects fall more slowly in an atmosphere.
Re:Terminal velocity (Score:2)
This force really is proportional to the mass:
f = mass*g = volume*density*g = K*size^3*density*g where g is the Earth gravitational acceleration at sea level and K depends on the shape of the object (it's 1 for cubes).
Nobody needs to turn in any grave.
Re:Not the first time . . . (Score:4, Informative)
Someone wrote in asking if a penny dropped from the empire state building could kill someone on the ground. A physicist contacted by Maxim suggested fastening g a length of string to the penny and holding it out the window of a moving car. When the penny is at 45 degrees, check the spedometer and that is a very rough estimate of the object's terminal velocity. Maxim's penny only had a rough terminal velocity of 16mph. The metorite could be similar. We still don't know its speed entering the atmosphere and how long it took to fall through.
Re:Not the first time . . . (Score:2)
I guess that depends if you buy into the theory that a meteorite caused the last ice age and wiped out most life on the planet...
Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key. (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with this is that meteors are not hot. See this link [spacescience.com] and this one. [thursdaysclassroom.com] From the first link:
Objects from space that enter Earth's atmosphere are -- like space itself -- very cold and they remain so even as they blaze a hot-looking trail toward the ground. "The outer layers are warmed by atmospheric friction, and little bits flake away as they descend," explains Yeomans. This is called ablation and it's a wonderful way to remove heat. (Some commercial heat shields use ablation to keep spacecraft cool when they re-enter Earth's atmosphere.) "Rocky asteroids are poor conductors of heat," Yeomans continued. "Their central regions remain cool even as the hot outer layers are ablated away."
And from the second:
Are asteroids hot or cold as they descend through Earth's atmosphere? (Level II, They are cold as they enter and remain so even as they blaze a hot-looking trail toward the ground. The outer layers are warmed by friction and little bits flake away as they descend.)
So I suppose it is part of abilated material if it is real, that would explain why it was hot. That would probably still make it a meteor. It might also explain why she still owns her foot.
Re:Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key. (Score:3, Informative)
A-B-L-A-T-I-O-N
A-B-L-A-T-E-D
Re:Possible, but unlikely. Abilation is key. (Score:3, Informative)
The sources you quote are a lot of rehashed BS. Note how the wording is nearly identical in each. Obviously copied by someone who doesn't have a clue about physics... (probably just a Ph.D. ;)
"... very cold and they remain so even as they blaze a hot-looking trail ..."
hot-looking??? Just what do they think is causing all that bright white light to be given off anyway? It's called BLACK BODY RADIATION! It means that the surface of the object emitting the light is thousands of degrees. The specific temperature can be determined directly from the light's most intensely emitted frequency.
Most meteorites litterally burn up in the atmosphere on re-entry, leaving at mosts tiny specs that fall as dust. These are solid rock and iron and their surfaces don't just flake off like a piece of pie crust.
Now, the core temperature of the object and it's temperature on impact is another matter, but those quotes are WAY off base.
4. Profit! (Score:3, Funny)
It is just this kind of mishap that will finally allow my Meteor Insurance business to take off.
Re:4. Profit! (Score:2)
shows precisely why no one will
underwrite such an insurance
History of meteories falling to earth (Score:5, Informative)
According to a site that chronicles the history of meteorite attacks [branchmeteorites.com], there's a lot of wierd things than meteorites end up hitting...cows, horses, cars, farmers, etc.
Very light on the details.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Very light on the details.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Very light on the details.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Very light on the details.... (Score:3, Funny)
Whoa! What are the changes of a second meteorite hitting a Slashdot reader while he is commenting a meteorite story?!!?
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
What was the purpose of this paragraph? It just comes out of nowhere, and the subject abruptly dropped. Is there some reason to believe it might be from Mars, rather than, say, anywhere else? Does it matter? Was the reporter concerned that the Martians were hurling rocks at little girls' feet?
It just struck me as though this reporter didn't have the faintest clue what they were reporting on, but remembered some buzz about meteors from Mars a few years back...
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
I speculate, aswell, that the stone could be the fore-front of the Martian Invasion of Earth! To arms, to arms! The Martians are coming! The Martians are coming!
By the way of England of course. Was it three if by air and four if by space?
Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
You kno what happens - they phone some guy in a University and repeatedly ask "could it have come from Mars?" "Well yeah - I guess" says the guy (thinking "it could have come from anywhere - I haven't seen it, have no idea of it;s composition, but I can't say no") Next thing, he's being quoted in some half arsed article as saying "it could have come from Mars"
You gotta laff at TV news programmes (it may be on a web site but the BBC is a TV outfit)- they never tell you anything but the obvious.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
The stone could be a charcoal briquette that fell off the roof next door--the college students in the adjacent building were having one last barbecue before going back to school.
One of the students was being severely beaten by his friends for posting a message to Slashdot containing the phrase "3. Profit!!!". When his head hit the grill, the briquette was ejected over the edge of the roof.
Gender bias? (Score:2)
I have read that males are something like 3 times more likely to get hit by lightning than females.
One theory is that men are more likely to have outdoor jobs (ranger, cop, ditch digger, etc.)
Another theory is that men are too bull-headed to come in from storms.
Re:Gender bias? (Score:2)
Nope (Score:2)
More men golf.
how is that possible (Score:2)
Now even if some argues that it was slowed down by air, still it could have a terminal verlocity of 120Lm/hr atleast and it would be damn hot. It would burn a hole right through her foot!
PRobably it is something else.
Man bites dog! (Score:2)
Promise you won't ask me to verify this story.
The dynosours are still pissed also, I bet.
Impossible (Score:2, Insightful)
Remembering my high school physics, all things of the same mass will fall through the earth at the same speed, assuming they are aeorodynamically equivalent, beccause they have the same terminal velocity.
This girl's foot would be pulverised if it was hit by some space junk of that size that had just fallen through earth's atmosphere.
It seems obvious that this is not a meteorite at all. If it was, she would probably only have one leg. The only slim possibility I can imagine, is if the meteorite was so full of bubbles that it came to earth with the characteristics of foam. Unlikely given the photo they have shown.
Re:Impossible (Score:2)
It depends on the mass of the meteorite. Too small and it burns up. Too big and it creates a tourist trap in Arizona. But at the right mass, it will hit like a rock dropped from an airplane. That's because the atmosphere will slow it down. It WILL hurt when it hits. But it's entirely possible that it can hit a girl's foot without removing it.
But what about your high school physic's teacher? He too busy reading physics texts and not enough time looking at the real world. In college we performed the classic physics experiment that no one ever performs: we dropped a watermelon and a grape from the top of a building. The standard physics text says that they will both hit at the same time. But the watermelon hit first! I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why...
This girl WAS hit by a meteorite (Score:2)
Re:This girl WAS hit by a meteorite (Score:3, Funny)
I don't mean to be cruel, for I could use the same advice, but if that lady in the hospital photo lost a some weight, it looks like the stone would have *missed* her rather large tummy.
The physics are simple: Bigger people are bigger targets.
Perhaps we should start sleeping standing up to present a smaller target profile area. Our foil hats will stay on better that way also.
Re:This girl WAS hit by a meteorite (Score:2)
The physics are simple: Bigger people are bigger targets.
In high energy physics, a particle with a lot of mass tends to have more of something with call cross-section, analagous to a size you give a physical ball. So you are saying this woman is a high energy particle? Can I throw neutrons at her? Will they bounce back and hit me in the face, just like in Thompson scattering?
Anthropemorphic bias (Score:5, Funny)
From the meteorite's perspective, it got hit by a fast-moving girl.
Imagine being a rock drifting thru space. (Don't tell my boss, but I do it all day).
Out of nowhere a big blue ball appears and keeps getting bigger and bigger until a human foot smacks you right in the keaster.
The daily newspaper for meteorites, The Rock Chronicles[1], right now probably has a story running titled, "Human Foot Hits Citizen".
[1] I don't know if they have "Rolling Stone" there.
"roof height" (Score:2)
Hmmmmmmmmm. *evil grin*
If you will excuse me, I need to get a bucket of volcanic rocks, and climb up on my neighbor's roof.
Space Rock?? (Score:2)
Credibility (Score:2)
Hmmm. Kids do like to exaggerate when something happens to them. Possible, but astronomically unprobable.
Why no permanent foot damage? (Score:2)
Re:Why no permanent foot damage? (Score:2)
Re:Why no permanent foot damage? (Score:2)
News? (Score:2, Funny)
Man bites dog: News.
Meteorite hits girl: Not news.
Girl falls from sky, hits meteorite: Now there's a story!
Wow! (Score:2)
When I first read the subject line, I thought "woah, someone actually got wasted by an intergalatic rock". Then I find out some 14 year-old got hit by a rock the size of a peanut and we're all supposed to find that interesting?
Where's the interesting news?
Dateline: The Bizzaro World (Score:2)
A small girl fell up from Bizzaro today striking and obliterating a large meteor. Debris from the impact is expected to reach Earth sometime next week.
Somebody has to say it: (Score:2, Funny)
I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also (as mentioned in another comment) the point of it being from Mars is totally bogus. Probably the "expert" they interviewed mentioned that some meteorites can come from Mars, and the reporter immediately picked it up, saying "The stone may have come from Mars."
Mrs. Hodges: "But mine was much bigger" (Score:2, Informative)
"In 1954, Mrs. Ann Hodges, who was napping on her couch, was awakened very suddenly when a meteorite penetrated her roof and struck her on the thigh. The Hodges or Sylacauga meteorite, which weighs 8.5 pounds and is 7 by 5 inches in diameter, can be viewed in replica form at the museum. The original is in the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Sylacauga is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records since this is the only case of a meteorite hitting a living person."
Althoug she was not hit directly. The meteorite bounced of some other junk in her house before striking her.
I don't believe it... (Score:3, Interesting)
No corroborating evidence at all except the word of the adolescent girl herself. Nobody else saw it. Nobody but she can testify that it was warm.
They say they "plan" to have the stone analyzed by scientists, but it hasn't happened yet.
Even the scientist couldn't prove that someone hadn't warmed up a meteorite and pitched it over the rooftops.
I have no doubt Charles Fort would put this in his newspaper clippings file, but the only thing that's remarkable about this to me is that the BBC would publish it.
I bet a nickel that there's never even any followup story reporting on any scientist's report on the meteorite. I can just see the family in their car on their way to the university and the embarrassed kid 'fesses up.
Re:I don't believe it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually this is the #1 reason I don't think she was hit by this meteorite - it's a common missconception that meteorites are hot when they hit the earth. There's an FAZ article [faz.com] about common myths about meteorites.
The #2 reason: Even a small piece of iron/rock like this, falling from more than 100m height surely would break a girl's foot if it hits it.
My guess: She bought the meteorite via internet and maybe it fell on her foot when she opened the package...
York, City of Meteorites (Score:2, Informative)
Some people seem to think so. Sadly, such impacts generally turn out to have far more mundane explanations [bbc.co.uk].
In other news... (Score:2)
I can remember... (Score:2)
Blob no meteorite
A strange blob that an expert believed plummeted
from the heavens suddenly became less alien yesterday
after it was found to be a lump of asphalt covered
with paint. "I'm kind of embarrassed," said David
Dilon, a member of the University of Western
Ontario's geology department, who said he had been 75
percent certain the object was a meteorite.
Hmmmm... (Score:2, Funny)
The stone may have come from Mars (Score:2)
Hey - it might have come from mars - it might be a fossilised martian poop!
Conflict with the BBC story (Score:2)
The story on the BBC says they intend to put it in a glass case and keep it forever.
Wonder how it will really turn out...
Seriously confused here... (Score:2)
Now, are we talking about the British or the meteorites?
Re:With those odds (Score:3, Funny)
Re:With those odds (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:With those odds (Score:3, Funny)
Re:With those odds (Score:2, Insightful)
How do they know the odds of being hit by a meteor. The odds of winning a lottery are probably pretty predictable because a lottery is defined as having only a small number of randomly chosen winners.
We have no such assurance with meteors on the other hand. Who's to say that the Earth won't pass through some huge asteroid field. Then the chances of being struck by a meteor could suddenly skyrocket.
"In this context, isn't it obvious that Chicken Little represents the sane vision?"
Re:With those odds (Score:2, Funny)
Re:With those odds (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah that's smart, show a picture of a guy doing something incredibly dangerous and stupid, and getting away with it. Now they made it into a sport. (Let's call it platformhumping)
Better show them this [rotten.com] too.
Re:With those odds (Score:2)
Fairly good odds on surviving, then!
j.
Re:The text of the article... in case of /. Effect (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Somebody please... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:[rant] They could have written _something_ (Score:2)
You know you're in trouble when the most exciting subheading you can come up with is "shiny." Oooh, shiny. Jebus.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, the thing that caught me was that she said it was hot to the touch. Small meteorites tend to be cold by the time they hit the ground. They are mostly iron, so they conduct heat well, and cool off fast in the upper atmosphere.
And she said it looked "rusty". Meteorites are black; they can't oxidize in space.
It will be interesting to see if there's a follow-up on this.
BTW, here [nyrockman.com] is a picture of a car in NY that was hit by a 12.5-kg meteorite in 1995. Ouch!
Re:hmm (Score:5, Funny)
fake? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:3, Informative)
And she said it looked "rusty". Meteorites are black; they can't oxidize in space.
Presumably that it where the speculation that it may be Martian in origin originates. One might expect Mars crust to be both stony and oxidised. Martian meteorites are pretty rare though, so it makes the story more unlikely. It's barely possible though.
"Gentlemen, I would rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie than believe that stones fall from heaven." -- Thomas Jefferson
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Was that about the rocks or the victims?
That car sure looks like it had a nice new cavity, I sure want to see her foot.
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm thinking an object of that size hitting you after falling through the entire atmosphere ought to have been going fast enough to go right through her foot. Every time I've visited the deep canyons of the western United States, I've seen warnings all over the place not to throw even small rocks over the edge, as they will be going fast enough by the time they reach the bottom to seriously injure someone. Think about the size of a bullet and then contemplate that this rock should have been moving even faster than that.
-9.80665 m/s^2: it's not just a good idea, it's the law! :)
10 to 1 we never see a follow-up, and never know.
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Re:no holes? (Score:2)
Re:no holes? (Score:3)
Re:Stupid People... (Score:2)
Um, doesn't the fact that "the majority of all meteorites" are cold imply that some, at least, are not cold? (I suppose technically not necessarily -- 100% is also a majority -- but it's an extremely unusual way to say it.) And unless the good people of the Hayden Planetarium were lying to me all those years ago, I've seen meteorites that were pitted and melted.
It can be a 1 in 10^9 occurance and still occur...
Re:Stupid People... (Score:2)
Re:Tiny meteorite (Score:2)
Yeah, come on Slashdot! We want to see BLOOD like in the news channels! Try again when you have some news about a meteorite crushing a girl. That would be something... mwahahaha!
no, you are not a rocket scientist. (Score:4, Funny)
What about medium sized rocks, smartass?
Re:no, you are not a rocket scientist. (Score:2, Funny)
What about medium sized rocks, smartass?
Let's see if we can theorize what happens in the middle, given the two outer extremes. A) Small rock = completely destroyed in a ball of fire. B) Large rock = Makes big ball of fire, part of it survives & creates big explosion when it smacks into the ground, destroying other rocks along with itself...
Now you're suggesting that C) Medium-sized rock = no fireball, no explosion, no crater... just taps a girl on the foot and she picks it up and notices it's kinda hot... Yes, that makes absolute perfect sense, Mr. Spock.