A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar. "When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," Gerrit Blank said in a newspaper account. Astronomers have analyzed the object and conclude it was indeed a natural object from space, The Telegraph reports.
Most meteors vaporize in the atmosphere, creating "shooting stars," and never reach the ground. The few that do are typically made mostly of metals. Stony space rocks, even if they are big as a car, will usually break apart or explode as they crash through the atmosphere.
There are a handful of reports of homes and cars being struck by meteorites, and many cases of space rocks streaking to the surface and being found later. But human strikes are rare. There are no known instances of humans being killed by space rocks. |