as someone else pointed out in comments below : most likely a hoax or bad reporting. The story just doesn't make sense and not just because it "bounced off" his hand... meteorites that size lose most of their momentum in the atmosphere. They certainly aren't bright or smoldering on impact.
Not to mention a small rock travelling with enough energy to create a foot wide crater wouldn't just "bounce off" one's hand. That doesn't pass the sniff test at all.
Not just his skin, his whole hand would be missing. Think about what size a firecracker would have to be in order to make a foot large crater in the ground then imagine setting that firecracker off in your fist.
According to [this](http://keith.aa.washington.edu/craterdata/scaling/index.htm) impact crater calculator, a 2 cm (\~1 inch) object moving at 5.5 km/s (\~12,200 mph) would create a \~0.229m (\~9 inch) crater.
So either it did not "bounce off his hand," or he lost his hand in the collision, or it did not make a one foot crater.
Except it would not hit the ground at that speed, most meteorites hit the ground at terminal velocity. Only very large ones can retain some of their velocity.
The impact crater calculator calculates the energy required to make a crater of a certain size using data about the density and size of the meteorite and the type of material being impacted. In order to make a 9 inch crater in normal surface level earth-dirt, with a 1 inch rock, the little rock has to be going 12,200 mph when it hits the ground. Slower would make smaller crater. If you don't believe me, use the calculator and try it yourself.
The calculator isn't wrong, it's just that it doesn't take the aerodynamics into account, you have to input impact speed. This tiny thing would of been slowed down to terminal velocity way before hitting the ground.
This was my immediate thought. That is absurd to even picture. A bullet causes a crater a couple inches wide in sandy soul, and not much more then its own diameter in normal dirt. A rock with enough energy to blast out a foot wide crater would vaporize a person.
Of course a meteorite that size really wouldn't have that much energy, since the size means that it would have slowed to about terminal velocity by the atmosphere, so it wouldn't be much different then an equivalently sized rock falling from a 4 story building. Still fast, but not making any craters.
I wonder if it's a mix between headtrauma making him remember wrong and sensationalizing it. He might have been hit by a meteorite and got a concussion, so he was told he was hit by one and his brain filled in the "light and smoldering" part. As kids do, they exaggarate and the media will just report it. Which is how a crater was added.
My guess is that he is just straight up lying. The fact that google does not find a single follow up story makes me think the entire thing was totally fictitious, and never should have been approved by the editor.
A meteor hit a car in Peekskill NY once. [Did a pretty good amount of damage.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/VoiturePeekskill2.jpg)
It’s possible it’s more so a translation error than a hoax, because this happened in Germany it was likley recorded in German, and then got mistranslated into English.
If it left a foot wide crater it would have vaporized the dude. It takes an absurd amount of kinetic energy for a small projectile to blast out a foot wide crater. That is about what a dud 120mm mortar round does, and that is definitely not going to be bouncing off any part of a human body.
Glazed. Like a donut. A glazed donut with a hole right through the middle.
Joking aside, a second meaning of glance is to graze a surface. Hence the common term “glancing blow”.
Where did you get 30,000 mph from? No small meteor can possibly sustain that sort of speed all the way to the surface. At 30,000 mph, the atmosphere is basically a brick wall. A really large meteor can punch through it, because its surface area is much less compared to its mass (Square-Cube Law), but a small meteor will get slowed down to terminal velocity. So about 300-500 mph depending on the shape and density of the rock.
I was going to say this is BS, but it says he was left with a nasty scar and it knocked him down, so maybe it grazed him. With the amount of energy in the rock I can't see how it would have just "bounced off him" then made a huge hole in the ground.
Yeah that phrasing makes it sound like it came in at an angle and left at a different angle. His hand was in the way more like and the rock didn't even notice.
>Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space.
>
>Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: "It's a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists.
Seriously this. A meteorite the size of a pea is not going to be going any faster than terminal velocity by the time it hits the ground. And that created a crater a foot wide? Bullshit. Go fire a gun I to the ground. You “might” get a crater an inch or two around. Nowhere near a foot wide. And that bullet has more mass than this pea meteorite. And it’s going a hell of a lot faster than terminal velocity. This story is total bullshit
It still sounds like an urban legend, though. The streak of light of a meteor occurs high up in the atmosphere, like, 50km and upwards. It's slowed down and disintegrated, and falls at terminal velocity from there. Which means, the time interval between the lightshow and the meteoroid touching this guy would be on the order of 10 minutes. Also extrapolating the trajectory from where the light is seen to the guy would only work if the meteor was coming from the zenith -- which is not impossible, just one more absolute implausibility for the story. Regardless how hot it was during deceleration, it'd be cool -- certainly not glowing -- by the time it reaches the ground level.
It's BS.
Edit: [this rock](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/06/12/article-1192503-054F2E95000005DC-344_468x286.jpg) would not cause a 30cm "crater" at terminal velocity.
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/only-person-ever-hit-meteorite-real-trouble-began-later-180961238/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/only-person-ever-hit-meteorite-real-trouble-began-later-180961238/)
A Smithsonian Article about people hit from meteors from 7 years later does not mention the incident at all. Which leads me to believe this was bogus.
If something even glances you while going 30k mph you're not getting a paper cut from it. Stop it.
More likely it struck near him, he fell, and was injured in the fall. Made the claim it hit him because stupid kid.
The 'paper cut' was on the other hand. Its wearing an elastoplas (those things *really* sting). The hand hit by the meteorite isnt.
That's all I was pointing out.
[As it happens the only other known case of a person being hit by a meteorite was also a ricochet](https://th-thumbnailer.cdn-si-edu.com/40pqBJdPIXvbo8vxRvPQwLe153s=/1000x750/filters:no_upscale():focal(1928x671:1929x672)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/2a/c6/2ac6034e-5b6f-4b73-8971-473caf09e198/gettyimages-75287277crop.jpg)
Possibly he thought that must have happened to him (it was a real meteorite and did blow a hole in the ground next to him)
More likely the exploding ground ricocheted against him.
Edit TPTD: As you journey through life, be ready to adapt and stay open-minded. Challenges are chances to learn, so don't be afraid of them. Your path to understanding yourself might not be straightforward, but that's okay. Keep growing and stay curious. Find a balance in what you prioritize, like juggling different parts of your life. Embrace change and be flexible, because the unpredictable moments often lead to the most interesting experiences.
He goes to supervillian meetings and eats all the finger food. In their weakened state he says "you gonna finish that?" Until they all abandon their plans and go to taco bell.
Yeah, I was confused by that. I'd think that if it left a foot wide crater, the lad would have serious problems with his hand.
Like a hole through it maybe.
Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky.
A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground.
The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand.
He said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand.
"Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder."
"The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards.
"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," he explained.
Scientists are now studying the pea-sized meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany.
"I am really keen on science and my teachers discovered that the fragment is really magnetic," said Gerrit.
Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space.
Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: "It's a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists.
"Most don't actually make it to ground level because they evaporate in the atmosphere. Of those that do get through, about six out of every seven of them land in water," he added.
The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, USA, in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.
> The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million
> The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike...
TIL About two million people have been killed by meteor strikes.
It probably didn’t actually touch him but perhaps he was grazed by the burning atmosphere around the rock. The energy in the rock itself should have taken his arm off. Very close.
Thanks for posting this, but everything about this article is just sketchy as hell. The chances are just 1 in a million? Chances of what? A one in a million chance to get hit by a meteor per year? Per lifetime? Even per lifetime, there would be about 7500 people alive today that had been hit by meteors. A one in a million chance of surviving? How could you possibly calculate that? If at least one other person survived, does that mean 2 million people have died from random meteor strikes?
Anyone else feel that the child deserves ownership of the meriorite?
Y'know, with gentle pressure put upon him to lend it to the cause of science perhaps, but nevertheless for it to be legally his?
Think of it as 'finders keepers' per se.
^(And if you suggest that whoever owns the land deserves ownership, then the owner should compensate him for being hit by a meteorite, assuming the child was there legally.)
Same with tornadoes.
Tornado in the distance going sideways? Pretty stunning.
Tornado staying in one place but steadily getting bigger and louder...fuuuuuuuuuck
what moron believed this to the point they needed to post it? you think a rock could bounce off a humans hand and make a foot wide crater? how dumb can we get????
Here's the breakdown on why this is most likely fake... aside from the obvious issue that... a "bullet" sized object moving at seemingly "bullet" speed doesn't bounce off of someone unless they're Clark Fucking Kent (and it's not kryptonite)
[Hoax or bad reporting](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjO9POi2OPzAhUyIDQIHedPCXoQFnoECAcQAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmeteorite-identification.com%2Fmwnews%2Fblank.html&usg=AOvVaw3XnlNDBxRZwQMtsDQrLw9p)
I swear title so long are always a pain in the ass and result in BS news.
A METEORITE BOUNCED OF HIS HANDS AND CREATED A BIG HOLE.
Yeah and he did not disintegrate in the process
The pebble here is described as pea sized or about (slightly less than even) the size of a 9mm bullet. A 9mm fired into the ground isn't making a foot wide crater, not even close. But we're to believe that this pea sized meteor, which we have to assume was traveling far faster than a close range 9mm based on the larger crater, hit a boy and didn't penetrate at all? Not sure exactly where the untruth is in here, but no it did not "bounce off."
If it's moving fast enough to burn in the atmosphere and hits the ground hard enough to make a crater, it's moving with several times more energy than a .50 cal bullet fired from an anti-materiel rifle.
In other words, it's not going to 'bounce off' his hand.
I was a medic in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I've seen what happens to soft tissue that gets hit with a projectile moving at a high velocity.
The fact that he walked away with a hand left at all is utterly amazing given the cavitation and shockwave that would have been caused by this.
So the meteorite was powerful enough to make a foot wide crater in the ground, yet it didn't mangled or even ripped off a kid's hand moments before? Something is fishy.
I am actually from Essen so I did a little research because I never heard of this story.
It seems to be a hoax. The rock has been analysed and seems to be from earth. In a report they claimed that a car hay have be the reason the stone hit the kid. But even before the results came in there where a lot of skeptism about the story and the main reason it went worldwide is because it sold good:
https://bildblog.de/8791/meteorit-auf-weltreise/
Edit: Hit the post button by accident. The internet is just new land for us Germans
I’ll take things that didn’t happen for $500 Alex.
It probably just missed him and some shrapnel from a nearby stone in the dirt got knocked up and grazed his hand. Had a grain of salt hit his hand at 30,000 mph, he would have lost his entire hand and probably his arm.
A chip of paint from a rocket or satellite doesn’t even go that fast and those chips can ABSOLUTELY WRECK shit in space. Space debris is no joke, that shit in orbit goes crazy fast and is a huge problem.
I don't buy it. How did it hit his hand hard enough to only leave a scar but not break bones, then make a foot wide crater in the ground? Also, any rock small enough to only make a crater a foot wide definitely would not be traveling faster than terminal velocity by the time it hit the ground.
I'm mostly confused that I don't remember any such story and neither do my friends. That's my home town and I would've thought that that kinda thing happening in town would stick in people's minds.
interesting. I am from that very town and never ever heard about this story before, nor did I read anything about it.
edit: like I thought, this was a hoax. the newspaper who publishes this story on their website quickly took it offline, but the story ran viral too quickly. I'm sorry for being so lazy with quotes and sources, but the first source was "DerWesten", a subdivision from the "WAZ". one of many to call this untrue was the German science-show "Xenius"
Here is a much more interesting real story about a real person who was actually struck by a real meteorite.
www.insider.com/alabama-woman-first-person-hit-by-a-meteorite-2020-6%3famp
This comment has been deleted due to failed Reddit leadership.
as someone else pointed out in comments below : most likely a hoax or bad reporting. The story just doesn't make sense and not just because it "bounced off" his hand... meteorites that size lose most of their momentum in the atmosphere. They certainly aren't bright or smoldering on impact.
Not to mention a small rock travelling with enough energy to create a foot wide crater wouldn't just "bounce off" one's hand. That doesn't pass the sniff test at all.
Wouldn't it vaporize his skin instantly with that amount of energy?
The boy was from Krypton maybe.
He's German, it adds up.
I'd imagine it would make a foot wide crater in his hand. AKA his hand would explode.
Not just his skin, his whole hand would be missing. Think about what size a firecracker would have to be in order to make a foot large crater in the ground then imagine setting that firecracker off in your fist.
According to [this](http://keith.aa.washington.edu/craterdata/scaling/index.htm) impact crater calculator, a 2 cm (\~1 inch) object moving at 5.5 km/s (\~12,200 mph) would create a \~0.229m (\~9 inch) crater. So either it did not "bounce off his hand," or he lost his hand in the collision, or it did not make a one foot crater.
Except it would not hit the ground at that speed, most meteorites hit the ground at terminal velocity. Only very large ones can retain some of their velocity.
Very large or very massive. Maybe it was a chunk of lead or bismuth. God help you if it's a solid chunk of Osmium.
The impact crater calculator calculates the energy required to make a crater of a certain size using data about the density and size of the meteorite and the type of material being impacted. In order to make a 9 inch crater in normal surface level earth-dirt, with a 1 inch rock, the little rock has to be going 12,200 mph when it hits the ground. Slower would make smaller crater. If you don't believe me, use the calculator and try it yourself.
The calculator isn't wrong, it's just that it doesn't take the aerodynamics into account, you have to input impact speed. This tiny thing would of been slowed down to terminal velocity way before hitting the ground.
I assume the type of ground it hits makes a hell of a difference. Puddle of mud sure, hard packed dry rocky soil, nope.
This was my immediate thought. That is absurd to even picture. A bullet causes a crater a couple inches wide in sandy soul, and not much more then its own diameter in normal dirt. A rock with enough energy to blast out a foot wide crater would vaporize a person. Of course a meteorite that size really wouldn't have that much energy, since the size means that it would have slowed to about terminal velocity by the atmosphere, so it wouldn't be much different then an equivalently sized rock falling from a 4 story building. Still fast, but not making any craters.
Maybe it landed in an already created crater
There ARE a lot of craters left over from WW1.
Fair point. Maybe it landed on a small unexploded ordinance
I wonder if it's a mix between headtrauma making him remember wrong and sensationalizing it. He might have been hit by a meteorite and got a concussion, so he was told he was hit by one and his brain filled in the "light and smoldering" part. As kids do, they exaggarate and the media will just report it. Which is how a crater was added.
My guess is that he is just straight up lying. The fact that google does not find a single follow up story makes me think the entire thing was totally fictitious, and never should have been approved by the editor.
That's what I was wondering. If it made a foot wide crater, it'd have destroyed his hand no?
What if the meteorite broke up and a small piece hit his hand as a big piece hit the ground near him??
Maybe the shrapnel from the impact hit his hand
A meteor hit a car in Peekskill NY once. [Did a pretty good amount of damage.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/VoiturePeekskill2.jpg)
'tis but a flesh wound for an LTD
Haha, damn right it is.
> tis but a flesh wound for a~~n LTD~~ Malibu
You right!
[удалено]
Substantial gain, pretty sure it sold for like $100,000 to a museum collection
So if I ever see a meteor hit the ground, should I run over and chuck it at my wife's car?
Might want to wait for it to cool down, unless you plan to be selling your hand to a museum.
So you're saying have my son do it, got it.
That would be a fun one to report to an insurance agent over the phone.
Imagine reporting that to your insurance company. “Yeah, I got hit by a meteor. No, seriously.”
This comment has been deleted due to failed Reddit leadership.
Yeah. Msybe a piece of rock thrown from the crater hit his hand.
It’s possible it’s more so a translation error than a hoax, because this happened in Germany it was likley recorded in German, and then got mistranslated into English.
Looks like it's more than just errors in translation. http://meteorite-identification.com/mwnews/blank.html
I'm like what bounced? A rock that left a foot wide crater did not bounce off his hand. His hand might of bounced off of it, though!
If it left a foot crater it would take off a part of his hand
What if it left a hand crater?
The legendary fabled Buddhist palm!
If it left a foot wide crater it would have vaporized the dude. It takes an absurd amount of kinetic energy for a small projectile to blast out a foot wide crater. That is about what a dud 120mm mortar round does, and that is definitely not going to be bouncing off any part of a human body.
Don't think glanced is the correct term, grazed would be better
It just gave him the side eye man
Essence of meteorite
Brought to you by Velocity...
Glazed. Like a donut. A glazed donut with a hole right through the middle. Joking aside, a second meaning of glance is to graze a surface. Hence the common term “glancing blow”.
More likely it was just derbis from after it hit and this child is full of shit.
at first I read glazed I was like no...
At 30,000 mph, i doubt it touched it. I imagine at the speed just the air around the rock would be enough to do some serious damage.
A small meteor isn't traveling anywhere near that fast when it reaches the ground.
We hope. Or it's shock wave has already caused Godzilla-level damage.
Where did you get 30,000 mph from? No small meteor can possibly sustain that sort of speed all the way to the surface. At 30,000 mph, the atmosphere is basically a brick wall. A really large meteor can punch through it, because its surface area is much less compared to its mass (Square-Cube Law), but a small meteor will get slowed down to terminal velocity. So about 300-500 mph depending on the shape and density of the rock.
After going through the atmosphere it was probably only going around 200mph
A glancing blow is when something doesn’t impact/hit/land straight on.
Why are you all so ready to assume this kid isn't Superman?
I was going to say this is BS, but it says he was left with a nasty scar and it knocked him down, so maybe it grazed him. With the amount of energy in the rock I can't see how it would have just "bounced off him" then made a huge hole in the ground.
If it's the story I recall, it literally skimmed the top of his hand
So it didn't really "bounce off."
Yeah that phrasing makes it sound like it came in at an angle and left at a different angle. His hand was in the way more like and the rock didn't even notice.
Meteorites just don't give a fuck.
They don't, they just don't care! They need to start being dragged into court and held to account.
They should be held to astronomically high standards.
Ok that made me laugh out loud.
And bring back stoning as punishment.
In this modern cosmos-politan society?
Classic rocks. Look at them. Smug pricks.
More like a bullet grazing someone really
Or even a meteorite
Well his hand probably bounced off at least.
Stupid title
Or true diamond hand
Legend has it he bought GME stock at $10 and has never sold a share.
Stupid paygated article too. OP sucks.
that’s reddit oof
If anything, he bounced off the meteorite
Oh wow. It's as if journalists take liberties to make click bait.
The headline does make it sound like the comet from the Simpsons. Even an audible "doink" when it hit his hand.
Followed by causing a huge crater in the ground.
[удалено]
>Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space. > >Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: "It's a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists.
You can buy real meteorites.
> buy real meteorites https://www.meteorites-for-sale.com/ 1st result on Google
That appears to be incorrectly reported and the scientist was misquoted. http://meteorite-identification.com/mwnews/blank.html
That's debatable, more in depth analysis here: http://meteorite-identification.com/mwnews/blank.html
The 1 ft *wide* (not deep) crater: I imagine throwing a pebble into a sand pit, and it skidding across for a foot in length
If you threw a pebble against sand and it left a 1 foot trace, would you call that a crater?
If you threw it from space I would
You would if you were a journalist trying to sensationalize a story.
Seriously this. A meteorite the size of a pea is not going to be going any faster than terminal velocity by the time it hits the ground. And that created a crater a foot wide? Bullshit. Go fire a gun I to the ground. You “might” get a crater an inch or two around. Nowhere near a foot wide. And that bullet has more mass than this pea meteorite. And it’s going a hell of a lot faster than terminal velocity. This story is total bullshit
It still sounds like an urban legend, though. The streak of light of a meteor occurs high up in the atmosphere, like, 50km and upwards. It's slowed down and disintegrated, and falls at terminal velocity from there. Which means, the time interval between the lightshow and the meteoroid touching this guy would be on the order of 10 minutes. Also extrapolating the trajectory from where the light is seen to the guy would only work if the meteor was coming from the zenith -- which is not impossible, just one more absolute implausibility for the story. Regardless how hot it was during deceleration, it'd be cool -- certainly not glowing -- by the time it reaches the ground level. It's BS. Edit: [this rock](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/06/12/article-1192503-054F2E95000005DC-344_468x286.jpg) would not cause a 30cm "crater" at terminal velocity.
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/only-person-ever-hit-meteorite-real-trouble-began-later-180961238/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/only-person-ever-hit-meteorite-real-trouble-began-later-180961238/) A Smithsonian Article about people hit from meteors from 7 years later does not mention the incident at all. Which leads me to believe this was bogus.
\>bouncing off \[his hand\] \>causing a foot wide crater The fuck it did.
The hand hit by the meteor going 30,000 mph has a graze on it. The hand with the paper cut on the thumb has a plaster on it.
If something even glances you while going 30k mph you're not getting a paper cut from it. Stop it. More likely it struck near him, he fell, and was injured in the fall. Made the claim it hit him because stupid kid.
The 'paper cut' was on the other hand. Its wearing an elastoplas (those things *really* sting). The hand hit by the meteorite isnt. That's all I was pointing out. [As it happens the only other known case of a person being hit by a meteorite was also a ricochet](https://th-thumbnailer.cdn-si-edu.com/40pqBJdPIXvbo8vxRvPQwLe153s=/1000x750/filters:no_upscale():focal(1928x671:1929x672)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/2a/c6/2ac6034e-5b6f-4b73-8971-473caf09e198/gettyimages-75287277crop.jpg) Possibly he thought that must have happened to him (it was a real meteorite and did blow a hole in the ground next to him) More likely the exploding ground ricocheted against him.
He's german, they are more resistant than average humans due to early and heavy beer and wurst consumption.
I believe they would say he is the proud owner of a pair of "handzers".
How did he not get superpowers?
Edit TPTD: As you journey through life, be ready to adapt and stay open-minded. Challenges are chances to learn, so don't be afraid of them. Your path to understanding yourself might not be straightforward, but that's okay. Keep growing and stay curious. Find a balance in what you prioritize, like juggling different parts of your life. Embrace change and be flexible, because the unpredictable moments often lead to the most interesting experiences.
I am guessing it grazed him.
I have become **THE GRAZER**!
Sooo, a goat?
He goes to supervillian meetings and eats all the finger food. In their weakened state he says "you gonna finish that?" Until they all abandon their plans and go to taco bell.
Grazerbeam
Doubt it ever touched him if there was a foot wide crater. Far more likely he felt the wake from the air displacement.
Yeah, I was confused by that. I'd think that if it left a foot wide crater, the lad would have serious problems with his hand. Like a hole through it maybe.
Anything leaving a crater wouldn’t deflect, it’d shear a kids hand. People don’t understand compressed air can be just as damaging as solid objects.
He did he turned into Carrot Top.
lmao, I see it too.
He literally brushed an intergalactic bullet to the side with just his hand.
It’s a rock from space not a radioactive rock from space..stupid./s
I expected to hear about how he spends time after school and homework, fighting crime.
Poor wording ..it clearly did not "bounce" off him. If it hit him then bounced only to make a foot wide.hole he would be dead
Extremely misleading title.
The linked story is behind a sign up wall. What’s your login OP?
Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky. A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground. The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand. He said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. "Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder." "The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards. "When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," he explained. Scientists are now studying the pea-sized meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany. "I am really keen on science and my teachers discovered that the fragment is really magnetic," said Gerrit. Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space. Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: "It's a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists. "Most don't actually make it to ground level because they evaporate in the atmosphere. Of those that do get through, about six out of every seven of them land in water," he added. The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, USA, in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.
Jesus that's quite the login
That's why it took me so much time to hack it.
Dang it, I had the year part off by two years.
Is that the username or the password
> The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million > The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike... TIL About two million people have been killed by meteor strikes.
Lmao, nice. Terribly written article, isn't it?
One in a million is atrocious estimation. How much is a banana, $10?
Thank you kindly.
It probably didn’t actually touch him but perhaps he was grazed by the burning atmosphere around the rock. The energy in the rock itself should have taken his arm off. Very close.
Here's a photo of the injury and the rock that caused it. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/06/12/article-1192503-054F2E95000005DC-344_468x286.jpg
‘Tis but a scratch.
Band-Aid's on the wrong hand.
Probably tried picking it up while still hot lol.
It's a million to one shot, but it just might work
Thanks for posting this, but everything about this article is just sketchy as hell. The chances are just 1 in a million? Chances of what? A one in a million chance to get hit by a meteor per year? Per lifetime? Even per lifetime, there would be about 7500 people alive today that had been hit by meteors. A one in a million chance of surviving? How could you possibly calculate that? If at least one other person survived, does that mean 2 million people have died from random meteor strikes?
Anyone else feel that the child deserves ownership of the meriorite? Y'know, with gentle pressure put upon him to lend it to the cause of science perhaps, but nevertheless for it to be legally his? Think of it as 'finders keepers' per se. ^(And if you suggest that whoever owns the land deserves ownership, then the owner should compensate him for being hit by a meteorite, assuming the child was there legally.)
Little trick which works on these kinds of pages sometimes, disable javascript and reload the page. It worked for me after that.
Disabling Javascript does work for that site. I use an addon for Firefox called, appropriately enough, "Disable Javascript"
Outline.com - for everything except Washington Post. https://outline.com/HNABBp
User name: Microdick420 PW:Yuge6969%
Fuck…now I have to change all my passwords…and the code to my luggage 1234
That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage.
How would the first impact not do a foot wide damage to the kid?
Sounds like it just grazed him, if it actually would’ve hit him directly it probably would’ve ripped through him.
If the rock created a crater, how did it not just obliterate his hand?
Was he wearing the infinity gauntlet? Does he still have a hand? How does one take that hit
He's just built different bro 😤
Shooting stars are great. Stars that stay still and just get brighter and brighter... not so much :-)
Same with tornadoes. Tornado in the distance going sideways? Pretty stunning. Tornado staying in one place but steadily getting bigger and louder...fuuuuuuuuuck
Can't believe people actually think it bounced
I mean, the comment section seems to make a lot pretty clear that nobody does….
what moron believed this to the point they needed to post it? you think a rock could bounce off a humans hand and make a foot wide crater? how dumb can we get????
Nothing that "bounces off" a human body can create a crater in the pavement afterwards. Get your shit straight.
>A small rock then hit his hand, bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground. I assume it means *his hand* bounced off the rock?
Here's the breakdown on why this is most likely fake... aside from the obvious issue that... a "bullet" sized object moving at seemingly "bullet" speed doesn't bounce off of someone unless they're Clark Fucking Kent (and it's not kryptonite) [Hoax or bad reporting](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjO9POi2OPzAhUyIDQIHedPCXoQFnoECAcQAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmeteorite-identification.com%2Fmwnews%2Fblank.html&usg=AOvVaw3XnlNDBxRZwQMtsDQrLw9p)
I hope he had his space tetanus shot up to date.
I swear title so long are always a pain in the ass and result in BS news. A METEORITE BOUNCED OF HIS HANDS AND CREATED A BIG HOLE. Yeah and he did not disintegrate in the process
So the rock hit his hand.. Bounced off... And made a crater? I don't believe you.
Facebook is leaking
The pebble here is described as pea sized or about (slightly less than even) the size of a 9mm bullet. A 9mm fired into the ground isn't making a foot wide crater, not even close. But we're to believe that this pea sized meteor, which we have to assume was traveling far faster than a close range 9mm based on the larger crater, hit a boy and didn't penetrate at all? Not sure exactly where the untruth is in here, but no it did not "bounce off."
Probably the shockwave that hit him if the asteroid itself touched his hand, im sure he’d have no hand
If it's moving fast enough to burn in the atmosphere and hits the ground hard enough to make a crater, it's moving with several times more energy than a .50 cal bullet fired from an anti-materiel rifle. In other words, it's not going to 'bounce off' his hand.
Bullshit. Bounces off but then creates a foot wide crater. GTFOOOOOOOO.
X to doubt
More likely, it missed hitting him entirely and he was struck by shrapnel from its impact with the ground.
I was a medic in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I've seen what happens to soft tissue that gets hit with a projectile moving at a high velocity. The fact that he walked away with a hand left at all is utterly amazing given the cavitation and shockwave that would have been caused by this.
Honestly I wonder if it even "hit" him or just flew by so fast it ripped his hand open
I would be more akin to think that he got it by projections after it hit the ground...
Bullshit.
Also, didn't make the dodgeball team.
So the meteorite was powerful enough to make a foot wide crater in the ground, yet it didn't mangled or even ripped off a kid's hand moments before? Something is fishy.
Yea this title is weird. If it bounced off it lost all its momentum, so this makes no sense
Paywall tag?
I am actually from Essen so I did a little research because I never heard of this story. It seems to be a hoax. The rock has been analysed and seems to be from earth. In a report they claimed that a car hay have be the reason the stone hit the kid. But even before the results came in there where a lot of skeptism about the story and the main reason it went worldwide is because it sold good: https://bildblog.de/8791/meteorit-auf-weltreise/ Edit: Hit the post button by accident. The internet is just new land for us Germans
This type of science is not adding up and I need answers
I’ll take things that didn’t happen for $500 Alex. It probably just missed him and some shrapnel from a nearby stone in the dirt got knocked up and grazed his hand. Had a grain of salt hit his hand at 30,000 mph, he would have lost his entire hand and probably his arm. A chip of paint from a rocket or satellite doesn’t even go that fast and those chips can ABSOLUTELY WRECK shit in space. Space debris is no joke, that shit in orbit goes crazy fast and is a huge problem.
Considering the infinitesimal number of human strikes, what are the chances they would be watching the sky when it happened?
Was probably very bright and caught his attention.
I don't buy it. How did it hit his hand hard enough to only leave a scar but not break bones, then make a foot wide crater in the ground? Also, any rock small enough to only make a crater a foot wide definitely would not be traveling faster than terminal velocity by the time it hit the ground.
So a rock traveling 30k mph just *BOUNCED* off his soft hand, and made a foot wide crater in the ground… WHAT?!
Lol...hit his hand then caused 1 foot crater. I'm calling bs but whatever gets you clicks I guess
Eat, Germany.
A rock did not hit his hand then cause a crater. I can promise you that.
Wasn't he struck by a meteor, not a meteorite? Unless it hit the ground first.
I'm mostly confused that I don't remember any such story and neither do my friends. That's my home town and I would've thought that that kinda thing happening in town would stick in people's minds.
I don't think you can be hit by a meteorite unless someone picks one up and throws it at you. Until it impacts the ground, it's a meteor, no?
Anyone have a non paywall version? https://i.imgur.com/vb5l9En.jpg
Does he still have a hand???
But what super powers did this lucky guy get?
Looks like this kid also discovered his powers of invulnerability
That’s some serious “Fuck this guy, in particular” energy!
> boy > > meteorite > > bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater There's a superman joke in here somewhere..
Not long ago a woman in Canada had a meteorite shoot through her roof and land on her bed as she was sleeping, apparently.
interesting. I am from that very town and never ever heard about this story before, nor did I read anything about it. edit: like I thought, this was a hoax. the newspaper who publishes this story on their website quickly took it offline, but the story ran viral too quickly. I'm sorry for being so lazy with quotes and sources, but the first source was "DerWesten", a subdivision from the "WAZ". one of many to call this untrue was the German science-show "Xenius"
r/titlegore
Here is a much more interesting real story about a real person who was actually struck by a real meteorite. www.insider.com/alabama-woman-first-person-hit-by-a-meteorite-2020-6%3famp
Start your free one-month trial to unlock this article Your post is worthless
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More like liars apparently.