Meteorite hits house in New Zealand

by Elsewhere 7 Replies latest jw friends

  • Elsewhere
    Elsewhere

    Watch a Video:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/40267000/rm/_40267149_meteor12_barnes13_vi.ram

    http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/06/13/nz.meteorite.reut/index.html

    Grapefruit-sized meteorite strikes house

    'It was like a bomb had gone off'

    WELLINGTON, New Zealand (Reuters) -- A grapefruit-sized meteorite smashed through the roof of a New Zealand house, hitting a couch and bouncing off the ceiling before coming to rest under a computer.

    The 1.3 kg (2.9 lb) chunk of space debris dropped out of the sky and plummeted through the tiled roof of the Auckland home on Saturday.

    "I was in the kitchen doing breakfast and there was this almighty explosion," owner Brenda Archer told the Sunday Star-Times newspaper.

    "It was like a bomb had gone off. I couldn't see anything, there was just dust."

    Archer's one-year-old grandson had been playing nearby minutes before it hit.

    It is only the ninth meteorite found in New Zealand and the first to hit a home.

    The Archers, who are following expert advice by drying the rock out in their oven, plan to sell it or give it to a museum.

    Experts believe the meteorite, a chunk of an asteroid, could be worth more than NZ$10,000 ($6,290), the newspaper said.

  • Special K
    Special K

    Good find Elsewhere.

    I find this quite interesting.

    My hubby was sitting here and says the guy could sell the meterite for $10,000. to repair the house and maybe some money left over.

    sincerely

    Special K

  • Gerard
    Gerard

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3146692.stm

    Meteorite wrecks houses in India
    At least 20 people are reported to have been injured after a meteorite crashed to Earth in eastern India.

    Reports say hundreds of people in the state of Orissa panicked when the fireball streamed across the sky.

    Burning fragments were said to have fallen over a wide area, destroying several houses.

    An official in Orissa said the authorities were assessing the damage and trying to recover what was left of the meteor.

    Reports from Kendrapara district in Orissa, where the meteor came to Earth, said windows rattled as it passed overhead.

    "It was all there for just a few seconds but it was like daylight everywhere," one resident said.

    Rarity

    Experts estimate about 100 tons of extraterrestrial dust grains fall to earth each day.

    Occasionally, a dark pebble or fist-size object will rain down, with boulder-sized objects or bigger being a historical rarity.

    The only recorded fatality from a meteor was an Egyptian dog that had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in 1911.

    Seven decades later, scientists recognised the dog had been struck by a meteorite from Mars.

  • Atilla
    Atilla

    Too bad it didn't hit a Kingdom Hall then again what are the odds?

  • Celtic
    Celtic

    My son Ashton looking at the meteorite that fell on his dads head now in the Science Museum London, you can see the dent in me head, though the meteorite came off worse!!

  • Princess
    Princess

    A meteorite hit Washington state about a week or two ago. It was in the middle of the night and was all over the news the next morning. There were conflicting reports as to where it actually hit. First they said it was on the peninsula, then I heard it was at the southern end of the state. Last report was the northern area. Weird. I'll see if I can find any info on it.

    Meteor lights up sky over Western Washington


    The Associated Press

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    SEATTLE ? A meteor about the size of a computer monitor lit up the Northwest sky early this morning, setting off sharp booms that stunned witnesses.

    "There was some question as to whether it was a piece of space junk burning up, but it was not," said Geoff Chester, a spokesman for the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. "People always want to know, was it something we put up there coming down again? As far as I've been able to figure out, it was simply a rock falling out of the sky, as they are wont to do on occasion."

    Readers report


    We heard reports from several readers about the mysterious booms and flashes of light early this morning over Puget Sound:
    "At first, I thought I was being beemed [sic] up, but no gauges on my car changed, so I knew I wasn't being 'taken'"
    ? Linda Schumpert
    · Read more reader reports
    Chester said it was a type of meteor called a bolide, one which appears bright like a fireball in the sky.

    Nothing unusual was detected on National Weather Service radar, and authorities also ruled out aircraft problems or military flight tests.

    Toby Smith, a University of Washington astronomy lecturer who specializes in meteorites, said the skybursts were reported over a wide area around 2:40 a.m.

    Witnesses along a 60-mile swath of the Puget Sound region from the Tacoma area to Whidbey Island and as far as 260 miles to the east said the sky lit up brilliantly, and many reported booms as if from one or more explosions.

    Video of the flash



    Meteor images taken from cameras situated at Harborview Medical Center.
    · Camera 1

    · Camera 2
    · Camera 3
    · Camera 4
    Requires RealPlayer Jay Neher, a weather service meteorologist, said the agency's radar on Whidbey Island showed nothing unusual but added that the dish could have been pointed at another part of the sky at the time and could not detect objects above about 20,000 feet.

    Civilian pilots reported seeing the flash from Ellensburg, east of the Cascade Range, said an FAA duty officer who did not give her name.

    At Whidbey Island Naval Air Station about 40 miles north of Seattle, Petty Officer Andrew Davis said he and others saw the skyburst.

    "It made a pretty big bang," Davis said. "We thought it could maybe be a meteorite or something."

    In Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, about 260 miles to the east, Dick Haugen said he was driving to work at KVNI Radio when he saw a flash that he took to be lightning about 2:40 a.m. ? then learned there were no lightning storms anywhere in the region.

    Ralph Gaume, head of astronometry at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., said he knew of no likely source from outer space, such as a passing comet or meteor cluster or shower, but added that meteors commonly appear at random.

    Astronometry is the branch of astronomy that measures the size and location of celestial objects.

  • ozziepost
    ozziepost

    That NZ "meteorite" was rather tiny though, wasn't it? I suspect the world is getting jittery because of current events and those in the recent past.

    Ozzie

  • stillajwexelder
    stillajwexelder

    The WTBTS are right -Armageddon is just around the corner!

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