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Meterorite chunk crashes into house, bedroom, pillow
- 8eye 5y agosleeping with aliens, you know, it would be kinda fun to build a defense system against asteroids. a system so precise that this rare possibility becomes even more impossible. sure the roi on wouldn’t be anything but the idea of putting it on other planets gets my mind out there. that and i really want to build autonomous farming equipment that we can use for terraforming from other planets from afar. you know like thinking way into the future, it’s going to happen eventually. maybe we’ll see a small portion of that
- Archelaos 5y agoRemindes me of that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylacauga_(meteorite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylacauga_(meteorite)
- xwdv 5y agoWould the rock have had enough force to kill her if she had slept on that side of the bed that night? What a way to go, imagine there could be a rock hurling through the universe for billions of years waiting to reach its final destination by crashing into your skull and killing you as you sleep peacefully.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago>Would the rock have had enough force to kill her if she had slept on that side of the bed that night? Can a lump of iron kill you if it fell on your head from the ceiling? Yes, it can.
- amachefe 5y agoYes, it will
- mmmBacon 5y agoWell that’s a pretty big chunk. Can’t tell if it’s metal or stone but meteorites are worth a lot. She may not realize how much the meteorite is worth. According to this site: http://www.meteorlab.com/METEORLAB2001dev/pricing.htm http://www.meteorlab.com/METEORLAB2001dev/pricing.htm Common iron meteorite prices are generally in the range of US$0.50 to US$5.00 per gram. Stone meteorites are much scarcer and priced in the US$2.00 to US$20.00 per gram range.
- changoplatanero 5y agoFun fact: there are very few recorded incidents of a meteorite hitting a person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylacauga_(meteorite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylacauga_(meteorite)
- sixothree 5y agoFor millions of years that rock was going to hit that person. Just. Waiting.
- brink 5y agoFrom the very beginning, you were always going to be where you're at right now.
- sixothree 5y agoShhhh. Nobody wants that realization.
- FeepingCreature 5y agoEh, it's not so bad once you realize that free will can only exist due to the crushing grasp of determinism.
- fcovideqlctrl 5y ago
- undoware 5y agoWell, damn. And here I'd thought the premise of _Donnie Darko_ was unrealistic, but here it is, with a meteorite instead of a jet engine, no less. Someone better at stats than I am: What is the probability of getting hit in the face by a meteorite while you sleep? Aspiring screenwriter's gotta know
- stargazer-3 5y agoAround 5e-14 per year, assuming random impact location, small (i.e. not town-sized) projectiles, and head impact cross-section the size an A4 paper. You can sleep safely. Waiting for 10^14 years will take a while - by that time, no new stars are born in Milkomeda, and the Sun's white dwarf remnant has cooled down to a point of no longer being visible by naked eye. (edit: of course, it's not reasonable to assume that the 500 impacts / year will be constant till the end of time) Hitting a random human on Earth, though, is a munch higher likelihood - around 0.04% per year if I did my numbers right.
- undoware 5y agothank you <3
- p1mrx 5y agoIf, hypothetically, I wanted to defend myself from such meteors, what could I install in an attic?
- ufmace 5y agoA couple of meters of concrete probably. This might require a new house.
- sbierwagen 5y agohttps://fortifiedestate.com/product/bullet-resistant-fiberglass-panels/ https://fortifiedestate.com/product/bullet-resistant-fibergl...
- beckman466 5y agolive/move underground
- trhoad 5y agoYeh this didn't happen. > Hamilton said she didn't tell anybody about what had happened for a few days while she absorbed the experience. Sure!
- yumraj 5y agoIn the photos the meteorite is just sitting there. Shouldn’t it have been extremely hot to burn the pillow?
- mensetmanusman 5y agoI hope that happens to me some day, I would immediately try to find out if it was a quasi-crystal!
- sydthrowaway 5y agoDo you want Venom? Cause this is how we get Venom.
- JadeNB 5y agoWhy does the meteorite have the energy to crash through the roof of the house, but then stop on a pillow (without damage to the pillow, as far as the picture shows)? (I'm not sure why we have this bizarrely sequential headline—surely no-one would say "crashes into house, bedroom, pillow" in conversation—when the actual headline, "Woman rocked awake by meteorite chunk crashing into her bedroom", seems (if punny) just fine. But I do like that the article leads with a picture of a meteorite sitting on a pillow. You know, as proof.)
- lovecg 5y agoSpeak for yourself. My conversations are specific, detailed, factual.
- teraflop 5y agoI don't know how much stock we should put in the exact sequence of events recalled by someone who had just woken up, but it doesn't seem that implausible to me. It's not like the meteorite would have been traveling at thousands of miles per hour. By the time it got to ground level, it would have slowed down to its terminal velocity. Some amount of energy would have been absorbed in its collision with the roof, and it wouldn't have had time to accelerate very much in the remaining fraction of a second before coming to rest on a soft surface. By way of comparison, I can easily imagine a dropped bowling ball going through a roof but not doing much damage to a bed and pillow.
- sundvor 5y agoYep. I can easily punch through a wall. A pillow, not so much.
- rkagerer 5y agoTrue but I actually like the sense of passage conveyed by the existing title as you picture it closing in on the target. Like that rock had a rough night and just wanted someplace soft to crash.
- Zenst 5y agoMy thoughts as well and spent some time trying to think of how and details and it still don't seem to feel right. Roof don't look substantial enough to slow something that size and dare say density enough for it to be finally stopped by a pillow. Then the entry marks, just don't feel right, given the speeds and also the temps, I'd expect some entry marks and in a way, a more cleaner hole perhaps. Then the aspect that it would still be hot and no pillow would be able to withstand the kinda heat it would still have. Too much of this feels off, so be interesting how those tests come out. Makes me wonder - how hard is it to fake a meteorite?
- Zenst 5y agoWhat type of pillow can stop a meteorite is what I'm wondering. Sure the roof may of slowed it enough but for it to still be intact from that and at that size, it would of been dense to make it that far without breaking up or burning up and I'd of expected a more substantial roof would be needed to slow it. Then the final detail, It would still be pretty darn hot. So I'm somewhat sceptical.
- MrWiffles 5y ago“Aww, I loosened it for ya!” - Roof (Like the wide opening a jar of pickles her husband couldn’t)
- s5300 5y agoDon't check the internet tomorrow if it ends up being a MyPillow.
- vnchr 5y agoSounds like it may have hit the mattress before rolling between the pillows, and the photo and title are mildly sensationalizing with hitting the pillow directly. > “…I rolled back one of the two pillows I'd been sleeping on and in between them was the meteorite."
- marcodiego 5y agoI won't make numerical estimates here, but we can consider that: - the piece of meteorite had already achieved terminal velocity, - most of the remaining energy was lost on the collision with the layers of the roof and - final collision was dampened by the pillow, mattress foam and bed structure. By the size of of the object on the photograph, if it has approximately the same density of earth stones, the story seems 100% believable.
- pgreenwood 5y agoAs I understand it most meteorites, especially small ones, are cool when they hit the earth. https://planetary.msfc.nasa.gov/Meteorites_and_Craters.html https://planetary.msfc.nasa.gov/Meteorites_and_Craters.html
- 5y ago
- MrWiffles 5y agoI read this and thought, “damn alien assassins can’t even pull off headshots anymore!” Good thing too, this lady got wicked lucky!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- narrator 5y ago"The only good bug is a dead bug" - Starship Troopers
- opwieurposiu 5y agoI think this meteor came in a glancing angle and broke up at high altitude. If it were to come straight down it would have burnt up, or done a lot more damage. The terminal velocity of a baseball is ~95mph, a brick is ~150mph, so the meteorite must have been slowed down to around this speed before it hit the roof. It also would have had 4 min of freefall Canadian airblast to cool it off.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- asdff 5y agoI think the most intriguing aspect of this report is the dog somehow sensed this meteorite was on its way. "she awoke to the sound of her dog barking, giving her a moment's notice before a rock from outer space hurtled into her bedroom."
- jonny_eh 5y agoPerhaps another piece fell nearby just before this one.
- skulk 5y agoMaybe a rock hurtling at terminal velocity straight towards your head (approximately) makes some interesting high frequency sound waves that only dogs can hear?
- CobrastanJorji 5y agoNo, they wouldn't. Sound travels at the speed of sound. That speed is the same regardless of the frequency (although it varies by temperature and air pressure). Supersonic things travel faster than sounds. You could get around this by, say, making the air itself move directly towards the person nearly as quickly as the meteor, but that is probably safe to exclude as a possibility.
- Koshkin 5y agoThere is also Doppler effect, and dogs are known to be able to hear ultrasound.
- mwint 5y agoDoppler effect doesn't allow sound go to faster than the speed of sound.
- CobrastanJorji 5y agoDogs can indeed hear ultrasonic frequencies, but ultrasonic frequencies of sound, being sounds, travel at the speed of sound. Things that travel faster than the speed of sound go faster than sounds.
- Diederich 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylacauga_(meteorite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylacauga_(meteorite) The Sylacauga meteorite fell on November 30, 1954, at 12:46 local time (18:46 UT) in Oak Grove, Alabama, near Sylacauga. It is commonly called the Hodges meteorite because a fragment of it struck Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges (1920–1972).
- jaybna 5y agoI’m from Sylacauga. This is our claim to fame. All I can say is I’m glad it didn’t hit the woman from BC. Mostly because I don’t want anyone to get hurt. But I’d be lying if it weren’t a little bit about losing our bit of trivia!
- cmaxmagee 5y agoLooks like there were many sightings of this event: https://fireball.amsmeteors.org/imo_view/event/2021/6241 https://fireball.amsmeteors.org/imo_view/event/2021/6241 And her report: https://fireball.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/report/245558 https://fireball.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/report/2455... "This fireball hit and entered my house"
- dandanua 5y agoA video from the reports https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwHxuhVA_8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwHxuhVA_8o
- thedogeye 5y agoRoberta Sparrow predicted this in her book the Philosophy of Time Travel.
- foobarbecue 5y agoSo THIS is why dogs don't like fireworks.
- pokoleo 5y ago@dang: can you change the title? Simple typo meterorite → meteorite
- elihu 5y agoIt kind of makes me wonder if my intuition about how rare meteorites are is a bit off; for one meteorite to almost hit a person, there must be many more meteorites that weren't noticed, or were never found. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Frequency_and_risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Frequency_and_ris... > An estimated 500 meteorites reach the surface each year, but only 5 or 6 of these typically create a weather radar signature with a strewn field large enough to be recovered and be made known to scientists. I wonder if there are places on the sea floor with piles of these things that have accumulated over the years and for whatever reason not been buried in sediment? I suppose iron meteorites would probably rust and disintegrate; maybe some of other materials might survive.
- SapporoChris 5y agoReminds me of Ringworld by Larry Niven. Early in the book, the notoriously paranoid alien is outside and stressed about the odds of being hit by a meteorite.
- dekhn 5y agoI used to be skeptical of the idea there were any meteorites of martian origin on earth but it turns out there is copious mass exchange between planets. Note that people routinely find meteorites just hanging out on the surface in areas like Antarctica
- dylan604 5y agoSolid field of white with a not-white object sitting on it vs grass, dirt, weeds, sand, etc. Doesn't quite seem fair
- eftychis 5y agoYes the probability of hitting a house is low. To begin with assuming uniform sampling over the planet (asterisk here) hitting land is lower than hitting an ocean / large water body. The asterisk here is that from my knowledge asteroid belts in the system are almost co-planar to Earth so even accounting for dispersion my expectation is that the dostribution to the Earth surface hits is not quite uniform. But to partially answer your last question with a quick Google search: https://www.newsweek.com/meteorite-nasa-fragments-1003713?amp=1 https://www.newsweek.com/meteorite-nasa-fragments-1003713?am...
- alaxsxaq 5y agoI met a guy who owned the Peekskill meteorite and the car which it hit it. He was/is a well known meteorite and Eurypterid dealer.
- dmix 5y agoReminds me of this story which is apparently is one of the most famous meteorite incidents, being filmed by 16 angles in 1992, across multiple US states before smashing into a cherry red Chevy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peekskill_meteorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peekskill_meteorite This was a noteable Wikipedia story recently (maybe coincidently).
- beckman466 5y ago> The Peekskill meteorite is estimated to be 4.4 billion years old. If everything in the universe is the same age (emerging from the big bang), is 4.4 billion years the last time the meteorite had a serious physical transformation (to it’s current form)? If not, what is meant with 4.4 billion years old?
- zamadatix 5y agoYes, in the same way your car might be 5 years old the age refers to the time the object was formed not the age of the matter/energy in it.
- jacquesm 5y agoIt means it was formed right along with the rest of the planets. The sun is not a first generation star, that's why we have all those heavy elements here out of which more complex constructs are made. So not everything is 'the same age'.
- rhn_mk1 5y agoTo make this more precise, it refers to the nuclear transformation of elements.
- eCa 5y agoThe same way it makes more sense to celebrate when a person was born[1] than to celebrate when the atoms of their body was formed. [1] Regardless of https://youtu.be/T5f8WoV0zbQ https://youtu.be/T5f8WoV0zbQ
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- User23 5y agoImmediately thought of this[1]. This may well be the one in a billion exception, but skepticism is warranted. [1] https://sites.wustl.edu/meteoritesite/items/what_to_do/ https://sites.wustl.edu/meteoritesite/items/what_to_do/
- TearsInTheRain 5y agoBeing the first recorded person to die from a falling meteor is one of my biggest fears.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoWait so the dog barking saved her life?
- alana314 5y agoNew thing to be afraid of.
- picsao 5y agoThe likelihood of it happening to one specific person is small. The likelihood of it happening at all is huge.
- yummybear 5y agoGood for her - she can probably buy a house from the sale of the meteorite.
- JensRantil 5y agoThis is why I must sleep with a helmet from now on.
- charbonneau 5y ago> She and an RCMP officer dispatched to investigate suspected it was debris from a construction site on nearby Highway 1 Conspiracy theory: Meteorites aren't real. It's all just debris. Construction companies bribe astronomers so that they won't face criminal charges.
- K5EiS 5y agoWhat kind of construction site launches debris like that, maybe they are building trebuchets?
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoMeteorites are a conspiracy from Big Construction which in turn is a front for Big Trebuchet. We're through the looking glass here!
- charbonneau 5y ago> Catapults are a great way to get somewhere fast Elon Musk, June 11th 2020
- inerg 5y agoWeirdly enough I live the next town from this one. The construction they're talking about is twinning up the highway which requires blasting out the mountain to make room for the road, so it's not to surprising they thought it could have come from there.
- dunnock 5y agohow is that meteor did not destroy her bed or at least put it all to the flame heated by the friction
- MauranKilom 5y agoWhich friction? Friction with the air (or actually, compression of the air in front of the object, which is a much greater cause of heating) is how it sheds almost all its velocity in the upper atmosphere. Once it reaches terminal velocity, it doesn't heat up meaningfully by friction. See also: "From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?" https://what-if.xkcd.com/28/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/28/
- lokimedes 5y agoWake-up call from God.
- sandworm101 5y agoOne strange aspect of this: It happened slightly before midnight. Generally speaking meteors are more common in the morning hours, between midnight and noon. Those of us between midnight and noon are on the "front" side of the planet at the earth moves around the sun. That is why most are seen in the early morning. They are still there during daylight but we are less likely to see them. After noon we are moving onto the "lee" side, the back side of the planet that gets less meteors. This one hit just before midnight, right at that line between front and back sides.
- wasmitnetzen 5y agoSolar midnight in Golden is currently at ~1:30 though[1], so it was even a bit more in the solar evening than the actual time would suggest. [1]: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/golden https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/golden
- MeteorMarc 5y agoMeteors that are seen in the morning are mostly cometary material that do not produce meteorites. For material from the asteroid belt there is a sampling bias: material hitting at the evening side of the Earth has a lower relative velocity and therefore a larger probability to survive the impact with the atmosphere.
- OneTimePetes 5y agoThis is.. true for artifacts entering the earth relative to the solar systems, aka meteorites that are already circling the sun at moderate speed - aka the earth on its orbit moves into them. This does not hold for interstellar objects, which may come crashing into our spiralling course from any angle. Even for those, the likelihood for a "frontal" collision is slightly increased though. Question: If a object comes at just the right angle.. could it essentially make a hover-touch down landing (on a planet with not much atmosphere)? As it would have not much motion relative to the planet system (okay, rotation should be very little) and gravity would add speed..
- jhpankow 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mickjagger 5y agoSeems unlikely.
- coryfklein 5y agoA nearby home security camera actually captured a short glimpse of the meteorite falling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwHxuhVA_8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwHxuhVA_8o