14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite
A schoolboy has survived a direct hit by a meteorite after it fell to earth at 30,000mph.
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.
Wow!
...
Right.
Okay, the subtitle of the article is "A schoolboy has survived a direct hit by a meteorite after it fell to earth at 30,000mph." The first question that pops into my mind is: how on Earth does the boy or the newspaper know that the meteorite is going at 30,000 mph? That's about 10,000 m/s, which is damn bloody fast. It can cover the length of Singapore in about 4 seconds. And second question: direct hit? Even if it's granular sized, the kinetic energy and momentum involved would've blown up his hand. And then the article also threw up some numbers which, if you'd think about it, is highly fishy.
Definitely, either this is a sham that made it to the news, or there are gross inaccuracies in that article, which is rather shameful because The Daily Telegraph is somewhat a reliable source of news. I searched around and found a more reliable analysis of this article by someone from Discover magazine:
A boy claims he was hit by a meteorite
Okay dudes, all the more reason to carry an umbrella even if it is not raining.
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