Was it really travelling at 30,000 mph, when it hit him? Surely a pea-sized anything travelling at that speed would be carrying so much momentum that rather than "bounce" off a human hand and cause a gash, it's more likely to have a "hot knife through butter" sort of effect?

A pea sized piece of lead, traveling at about the speed of sound, leaves people dead.

And this one, traveling at 30,000 mph, leaves only a nasty gash?

Or did I miss something?

Most meteorites, especially ones the size of a pea, hit the ground at terminal velocity. So why was this one going so fast? Hard to see how it can hit him, then make a one foot crater without taking an arm off in the process.

I don't understand how small, hot high speed rock, that can make a 1 foot crater in the ground, would 'bounce off' a boy's hand. I'd expect it to blast a hole in his hand and leave nasty burns. Similarly with the 3,86kg meteorite that 'bounced off' a radio. Can any meteorite experts help explain this?

deserves to keep this space rock. I guess the meteorite could have passed straight through his body if its angle of incidence was less obtuse. I resist the urge to say he's a lucky boy, he has a 3" gash on his hand.

And of course anybody who's seen The Andromeda Strain is now waiting for Gerrit to fall over dead having been dessicated from the inside by a space-borne superbug...

Followed by the rest of Essen, Germany, Europe and eventually the World, unless we can get him to Wildfire a.s.a.p....

I doubt it. More likely his hand bounced off the meteorite. Momentum and all that...

Despite what we see in the movies it is a surprising fact that meteorites are not burning, or even hot when they land upon the Earth. The glowing fireballs we see in the night sky are caused by atmospheric pressure and friction. Meteors stop ablating (burning) approximately seven miles above our planet's surface, then fall in what is known as "dark flight," according to the normal pull of gravity. It is very cold at an altitude of seven miles, so meteorites cool quickly as they plummet towards the Earth. There has never been a documented case of a burning, or even hot, meteorite landing upon the Earth. If you witnessed a burning object hit the ground it may have been a damaged aircraft, fireworks, UFO, terrorist attack, or a practical joke, but it was not a meteorite.

Small meteorites shed almost all their velocity in the upper atmosphere and hit the ground at only a few hundred kilometres an hour maximum - enough to give a nasty whack, but not enough to excite Michael Bay.

And as for the red hot bit - sorry, witness evidence suggests that meteorites are rarely more than warm when they arrive. They've been sitting in the cold of deep space for the last few billion years. The meteorite is protected from the frictional heat by the ablation of the outer layer, so relatively little heat gets to penetrate the rock itself. One scientist who picked up a fresh meteorite compared its temperature to a baked potato - too hot to hold, but not so hot that it would cause a serious burn.

Still, hit by a meteorite eh? That's a good excuse for skipping PE!

b*llshit.

On the back of a fagpack...Anything with any substantive mass travelling at this speed would go straight through a human hand. A hign speed bullet roughly equates to 3,500 mph at max velocity. Bullets don't bounce off human hands at peak velocity.

So mass andaerodynamics wise, how many stone peas equate to a bullet. Hmmmm I guess possibly more than 9 peas so I retract, this might be possible. Move along, nothing to see here!

Anyway, either very lucky or those german experimants in the 40's.....

Something doesn't quite add up here, 30,000mph, bounced of hand, crater in the road. All goes to prove the unreliability of eye witnesses.

But hell any way you look at it he's very, very lucky, not sure I'd remember it correctly either.

And then made a crater a foot wide? what the hell was his hand made out of?

Am I the only one slightly skeptical about this. An that is probably about the size of a shotgun pellet hits the lad at several times the speed of a bullet and he only gets cut?

Surely the damage would have been more serious?

You realise that it couldn't have been travelling 30,000 MPH when it hit his hand... right?

Maybe in the vacuum of space but not once it was at ground level. If it was doing 30,000 at sea level it would be an incandescent ball of plasma and there'd be nothing left of the boy or probably his school!

And can someone tell me what his hand is made of if it "bounced" off it yet still made a foot wide crater in the ground? Is the boys name name C. Kent by any chance?

Good old Torygraph, you can always guarantee their scientific reporting is about as accurate as a broken clock.

So, this thing was fast enough to dig a rather decent hole into the ground but faild to obliterate Mr Blank?

Interesting.

Fortunately I live in Essen, so I´ll keep you posted...

*clicketyclack*

http://www.derwesten.de/nachrichten/staedte/essen/2009/6/10/news-122286237/detail.html

ok, no hit, just a close miss.

I hope it leaves some sort of scar as that will allow him the ultimate in chatup lines...

What's that?

Oh, that's where I had to deflect a meteor when I was younger.....

Terminal velocity isn't a constant. In fact I'd imagine it's rather fast for a small piece of metal, especially if it fit the meteor stereotype and was covered in golf-ball style pits :)

@ CAD MONKEY

Terminal velocity for a human in a typical arms and feet out pose is ~ 120 mph. In a nose dive a human can exceed 200 mph. Last I checked a pea was a brave bit smaller than a human...

The terminal velocity for a pea sized rock is -

Vt=(0.2222*g*(dm-da)*(r^2)/n

where * stands for multiplication, / stands for division

g is the acceleration of gravity (~980 cm/s^2)

dm is the density of the meteorite (~2.7-3 g/cm^3 for rock)

da is the density of air (~ 0.0012923 g/cm^3)

r is the radius (half the diameter) of the metorite in cm

n is the dynamic viscosity of air near the Earth's surface (~ 0.00018 g/cm/s).

thus the terminal velocity for a 0.3 cm meteorite with a density similar to granite is ~ 1800 mph.

What speed it was actually doing is another matter, but it could have potentially been zipping along ;)

I love how most people say he's lucky. As if it's lucky to be one of only a handful of people to get hit by a space rock. I would normally call that unlucky in the extreme. It's like when Uncle Ernie ties one on and wraps his pickup truck around a tree, loses a leg and his spleen but survives and people call him "lucky".

However, if he was actually hit by it, he is extremely lucky because apparently the demand for meteorites that hit man made objects (and surely he must qualify) is HUGE and the kid could earn quite a nice wad of cash for his pain.

But as with other writers, I am in severe doubt of the entire story given this 2 foot crater nonsense.

Depending on the angle it hit the atmosphere, it may only have been in the atmosphere for a handful of seconds before striking the ground. The upper atmosphere is significantly less dense than the lower atmosphere as pressure decrease is not linear with height increase.

It would have experienced aerobraking and shed some of it's momentum as heat and light due to friction, which would have made it pretty hot, and would most likely have struck the ground travelling significantly faster than terminal velocity. The real question is why only a single piece has been recovered when one would expect anything striking tarmac that hard to shatter.

@Colin 4 - Most matter in the solar system tends to orbit the sun on or near the ecliptic plane, which is at an angle of 23.5 degrees from our equator, so one would expect the majority of meteorites to hit the Earth in this region.

Megaplanes Nork-missile-busting-big-frikkin-flying-lazor test fails; targeting system malfunctions. "We'll do better next time" - Megaplanes spokesman.

"Sometimes I wonder if the Reg is entirely accurate "

Oh?

The Dominatrix will see you now.

Ooopsie: make that "Our Divine Moderatrix".