back to article Extraterrestrials strafe Bosnian with meteorites

A Bosnian man whose house has been hit six times by meteorites has come to the conclusion he's done something to hack off ET, the Telegraph reports. Radivoje Lajic, 50, from the village of Gornji Lajici, near Prijedor in northern Bosnia, has suffered half a dozen strikes since November 2007. Spookily, the impacts always happen …

COMMENTS

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  1. Tom 7

    According to the telegraph

    "Scientists are now studying magnetic fields around the property to try and explain the frequency of the strikes"

    I think they'll find those aren't really scientists....

    1. Tim #3

      Starting a cover up?

      Tom, you are clearly an agent of the european government, trying to suppress the discoveries of highly respected ufology scientists.

      I'm hoping the Raeilans get in on this story next, they're my kind of bonkers.

    2. Sigmund Fraud
      Alien

      Yesssss...

      They are g-men

    3. RTNavy
      Thumb Up

      Do they have HD Cameras with them?

      Are they "Men In Black", there are reports they are trying to complete a trilogy of the films!

  2. Witty username
    Welcome

    Throwing rocks at us?

    i for one welcome our technologicly backwards overlords...

    1. Anonymous John

      Actually

      If they are up there and we aren't, it's a good strategy. There's no defence against a falling rock.

      1. Oliver Mayes

        RE: Actually

        Some sort of reinforced hat?

      2. Justabloke 1
        Thumb Up

        Title

        Its ok, Stev Job's giant ego will protect us all, with its amazing ability to deflect any kind of brickbat

        1. Winkypop Silver badge
          Joke

          Agreed

          But apparently it depends on how you hold him...

  3. Chimpofdoom!
    Alert

    Maybe.. just maybe..

    the small meteorites are a sign of things to come and his house will be the epicentre...

    You all remember Armageddon right?!

    Now where's Bruce Willis?! We need him on stand by.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      epicentre?

      Only if there's an earthquake. (look it up)

      1. Chimpofdoom!
        Unhappy

        My Fail!

        ok, FAIL post on my behalf!

      2. G.H.
        WTF?

        Re: epicenter?

        I thought epicenter was commonly used in a figurative sense to describe all kinds of situations where there is a clear center from which something spreads out.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          That's called 'The Centre'

          sort of means the middle of something .

  4. elpaw
    Alien

    It's the Aliens targeting him

    (of the Alien movie franchise) for living near a place called Predator.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    get out of the house...

    ... you are in the way of their landing zone!

    any way, this is not my field,

    but should they be checking the landing zone? shouldn't they be trying to determine the source and check the source for abnormality? (which is in space.... errrrr... ok I'll check the landing zone as well).

    this is the same as trying to check where the shell have landed, instead of checking the trajectory of the canon.

  6. anarchic-teapot

    Prachett proactively mirrors real life

    Obviously one for the Professor of Vindictive Astronomy.

    (although I often wonder when reading this sort of article in any publication whether or not the victim is being gently sarcastic when he says things like "I'm obviously being targeted by aliens")

    1. Thecowking
      Thumb Up

      He was hit by a meteorite again

      This time it was waiting for him in an alley.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    But 1 steel girder won't do it

    All the aliens have to do is shift their aim a bit left, right, up, down and they miss the girder. He needs to sell a few more meteorites and buy some more girders.

  8. Code Monkey

    "there is no other explanation that makes sense"

    Like yours does? Crazy Bosnian!

  9. Peter Ford

    What he doesn't realise...

    is that 'Radivoje Lajic' is a terribly offensive term in Martian.

    A bit like "I seem to be having terrible difficulty with my lifestyle" in Vlhurg...

  10. David Pollard

    It's caused by the pyramids

    This extraordinary phenomenon is probably related to the pyramids that were discovered not so far away in 2006. Astute readers will recall El Reg's coverage of the story:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/26/bosnian_pyramids/

  11. myhandle
    Thumb Up

    Money

    I thought you could sell these rocks or a lot of money. The guy's sitting on a goldmine.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      on?

      I think you mean that he's sitting _under_ a gold mine.

  12. Anonymous John

    It's the Vogon Construction Fleet

    Building a small hyperspace bypass.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sorry to be boring, but...

    How many homes are there on the planet? And what are the odds that some home, somewhere, will have been hit 6 times by meteorites? Sounds similar to the birthday "paradox" to me - if you have thirty random people in a room, the odds are about 70% that at least two will have the same birthday. For any six meteorites out of billions of meteorites hitting the same any one out of billions of homes, I'm guessing the odds are pretty high. If it has to happen somewhere, there has to be a victim. He's just unlucky to be that one in however many billions of people it is these days - the aliens don't care who they hit.

  14. Stu
    Black Helicopters

    Ha!

    Call Mulder and Scully. Sh'yeah right.

    It's one of his neighbours going outside and chucking a lump of red hot coal onto his roof. I mean, how easily wound-up can some people get!? Far too easy a target for international humiliation.

  15. DaveW
    Alien

    It's a Vendetta

    Have you ever met anybody called Agrajag?

  16. gregors
    Happy

    Meteorite Attack, simply a world away, but correct Lattitude....

    I've been trying to discover why my meteorites are not landing in my back yard as requested, simply to find they have the wrong Longitude! That is very irritating to me and I am sorry for the error! They should really pay attention when I ask in such uncertain terms, but hey that's the Universe for ya! Never know how they're gonna respond! Still, Oklahoma is pretty centrally located...I just can't understand their error! And it could have been very lucritive for ya also, since I asked for the higher grade content for mine! Not often you get precious metals in a meteorite, but Titantium, Silver, Platinum and copper in one would make a person somewhat wealthy....But anyway, they'll get it fixed straight away, so don't you worry. Just have to wait for rain again this weekend! Sure hate these hot summers on Earth! You people need to do something about this here global warming...Thanks for the memo! I am sure they have the correct coordinates now...Oh and so sorry! Probably won't happen again! The new guy always seems to get it messed up, you know! Well, Cherrio!

  17. Tim Bergel
    Thumb Down

    Bad maths

    Sorry AC, you have got it wrong because the frequency of meteoroid impacts is generally very low.

    Suppose that, over 100 years, about 1 in a thousand homes worldwide get hit once. That seems a very high level to me but I'm making it more common to prove the point. Then, over the same period, one house in 10**18 would get hit six times. As the total population of earth is a rather less than 10**10, giving us maybe 3*10**9 houses, this isn't likely to happen.

    If the rate of being hit once is a more reasonable one in 100,000, the the chance of six hits is now 1 in 10**30 - so this is *really* not going to happen.

    For myself, rather than blaming ET for throwing rocks at the house, I would take a hard look at the local kids...

    1. TheRobster
      Joke

      Thats all well and good but...

      ... as any Pratchett fan knows (and there's at least two already here), million-to-one shots come off nine time out of ten, so there.

  18. LinkOfHyrule

    This is alien equivalent of...

    This is alien equivalent of those chav kids who throw concrete breeze blocks off footbridges onto the motorway.

    1. Dave Cradle
      Headmaster

      Concrete breeze blocks

      I'm no builder, but I thought breeze blocks were made of breeze (or brieze) whereas concrete blocks were made of...

  19. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
    FAIL

    Recycled silly season story

    First spotted in 2008 - although it was only 5 meteorites then:

    http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/080410-technov-aliens-attack.html

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    That's not meteorite

    That's alien poo!

    Looks like the shitter on the orbiting Qlauyt space station is on the fritz again...

  21. Stuart Halliday
    Happy

    What's more likely?

    So either we're just seeing a isolated statistically high point in the random data of meteorites.

    Or he is (kind of more likely IMHO) gathering these rocks and simply claiming they fell through/onto his roof in order to gain publicity and of course money.

  22. Michael 28
    Unhappy

    could be worse ...

    http://www.mosnews.com/society/2009/05/08/1550/

    apparently this happens a lot.

  23. Smith
    Thumb Up

    One little thing,,

    Now, he only has to convince them that the worst thing that can happen to a human is to have his home and hearth bombarded by handy dozen kilos solid gold or platinum meteorites..

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Umm

    My guess is that there was one meteor strike and the rest was kids throwing stones...

  25. gizmo23

    I reckon

    it's DR and Quinch.

  26. Craig 28

    Worth checking into though unlikely

    It might be there's something in the geology or atmosphere that's skewing meteorites. Of course if they're non-magnetic materials in the meteorites that's a bust. It'd also probably have to catch them fairly early in their trajectory which seems implausible but stranger things have happened.

  27. Alan Fitzsimmons
    Thumb Down

    That's no meteorite

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/thumb_down_32.png Sorry to be a downer, but just found a photo of him holding a rock that bears no resemblance to any meteorite that I've ever seen, and I've seen a few...although they weren't thrown at me.

  28. Trevor_Pott Gold badge
    Alien

    Why couldn't there be a non-alien logical explanation?

    The earth has a great big magnetic shield. Many solar system bodies are largely ferrous. What is to say that there wasn't an asteroid/comet/what-have-you that at some point spend enough time in a given magnetic field (Jupiter's?) as to have the various grains of ferrous material aligned? This would then make that object a natural magnet.

    If it subsequently broke up, (say due to a collision or gravitational disturbance from something large passing by,) it might well have cleared the orbit of whatever body magnetised it. If it's remains are on an inner-solar system orbit, one that interacts with Earth's on a periodic basis, what is to say that the Earth's magnetic lines of force couldn't funnel these bits of magnetic rock directly at this guy's house?

    None of that is impossible, and I am not even sure it’s all that unlikely. If we had sensitive enough equipment, I’m sure we’d find the solar system littered with small-ish magnetic rocks. I am also pretty sure that the Earth’s magnetic field would cause magnetic object to preferentially fall in a given area. Narrow the conditions more, (maybe his house is built on a huge iron plate of lodestone deposit,) and it should be explainable.

    The impossible or exceedingly unlikely is only so until you understand the details. It would be really interesting in this case to learn all the details.

    1. Chemist

      @ Trevor

      Sorry mate - it seems extremely unlikely even if the Earth was stationary & not rotating. But a spinning, moving target in the vastness of space ?

      I think it can only be enemy action ( or most probably a con )

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        @Chemist

        Does not the Earth's magnetic field rotate with it? If it does, and the lines of force meet in the same places, then theoretically anything that got pulled into the Earth's magnetic field would be "funnelled" to roughly the same places each time.

        If this theory was true, there should be more than one place on Earth where multiple meteorite strikes occurred in a relatively confined area. I agree it’s not hugely likely…but the basic science behind my theory seems sound. “Enemy action” I doubt.

        Con job I’ll buy.

        1. Chemist

          @ Trevor

          Trouble is the gravitational/aerodynamic forces on a meteorite must swamp any effects of any such magnetic 'well' . In any case a wide area around this house should be peppered with these meteorites if any such effect occurred. I don't believe this suggested mech. of 'targeting' could be so precise.

          I wasn't really serious about enemy action - it was just to contrast with the probability of a con

          Cheers,

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    TCP/MP (Meteorite Protocol)

    Until we have firmly established that the Meteorite Protocol only transmits in 6-bit, we should expect at least 2 more meteorites to strike, with a possible parity-bit to follow. For sake of the man's sanity we should all ask for a stop-bit.

    Until then, we should hash and rot' the target's hostname. Some anagrams for Radivoje Lajic are:

    Jovial Jedi Arc(tangent)

    I Jive a (dirt)clod jar

    Draco Jail Jive

    Beer Icon because you will all cheer!

  30. Rumcajz
    Boffin

    pinch of salt

    Hit once - believeable.

    Hit twice - possible, has to happen to someone.

    Three times is pushing it, but perhaps telling the story to the neighbors over a beer or three in the pub (he's not buying) is worth the effort in making another hole in the roof.

    Fourth time is still worth it for the insurance.

    FIfth time - discovered how to milk this thing and now he's on nationwide TV. Also getting good at making the holes appear authentic, a little scorching around the edges does wonders.

    Sixth time - In the international press at last. These people will believe anything, and now he can sell 'scientists' rocks as 'meteors' at high prices. WOnder if he's sold more than 6...

    Can we get a money icon please??

  31. halms
    Joke

    live rpg?

    real live space invaders?

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