Meteorite Hits Girl

redcliffe writes "The BBC has a story about a 14 year old North Yorkshire girl who was hit, on the foot, by a meteorite. Where's Bruce Willis when you need him?" The young Miss Carlton notes: "This does not happen that often in Northallerton"; no doubt the City of York is where most meteorites land.

Huh?

[kreyg]

The stone could have come from Mars, according to expert on Earth impacts Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University.

What was the purpose of this paragraph? It just comes out of nowhere, and the subject abruptly dropped. Is there some reason to believe it might be from Mars, rather than, say, anywhere else? Does it matter? Was the reporter concerned that the Martians were hurling rocks at little girls' feet?

It just struck me as though this reporter didn't have the faintest clue what they were reporting on, but remembered some buzz about meteors from Mars a few years back...

Impossible

[Xavier000]

How is this possible? I remember reading about a meteorite that hit a dam in Australia a few years ago. It evaporated the lake, and when scientists sifted through the mud, the meteorite was only the size of a marble.

Remembering my high school physics, all things of the same mass will fall through the earth at the same speed, assuming they are aeorodynamically equivalent, beccause they have the same terminal velocity.

This girl's foot would be pulverised if it was hit by some space junk of that size that had just fallen through earth's atmosphere.
It seems obvious that this is not a meteorite at all. If it was, she would probably only have one leg. The only slim possibility I can imagine, is if the meteorite was so full of bubbles that it came to earth with the characteristics of foam. Unlikely given the photo they have shown.

Re:With those odds

[g00dn3ss]

I hate it when news stories give stupid statistics like that.

How do they know the odds of being hit by a meteor. The odds of winning a lottery are probably pretty predictable because a lottery is defined as having only a small number of randomly chosen winners.

We have no such assurance with meteors on the other hand. Who's to say that the Earth won't pass through some huge asteroid field. Then the chances of being struck by a meteor could suddenly skyrocket.

"In this context, isn't it obvious that Chicken Little represents the sane vision?"

I wonder...

[plaa]

In a newspaper here in Finland it said it fell at her feet, not that it actually hit her. I'd say it's quite probable it didn't hit her, but the reporter streched the story a bit to give it a better twing. When you read the article, it very quickly gets over the point of it actually hitting her.

Also (as mentioned in another comment) the point of it being from Mars is totally bogus. Probably the "expert" they interviewed mentioned that some meteorites can come from Mars, and the reporter immediately picked it up, saying "The stone may have come from Mars."

fake?

[SeanAhern]

There's a good chance that this might be a hoax.

Re:With those odds

[ComaVN]

First Great Eastern say they decided to publish the picture "out of sheer frustration" in an attempt to stop teenagers climbing onto the tracks.

Yeah that's smart, show a picture of a guy doing something incredibly dangerous and stupid, and getting away with it. Now they made it into a sport. (Let's call it platformhumping)

Better show them this [rotten.com] too.

Indeed

[Scooter]

I agree - it's the worst type of superficial repetitive "journalism" - just repeating the headline over and over with increasing numbers of filler words - the BBC should know better.

You kno what happens - they phone some guy in a University and repeatedly ask "could it have come from Mars?" "Well yeah - I guess" says the guy (thinking "it could have come from anywhere - I haven't seen it, have no idea of it;s composition, but I can't say no") Next thing, he's being quoted in some half arsed article as saying "it could have come from Mars"

You gotta laff at TV news programmes (it may be on a web site but the BBC is a TV outfit)- they never tell you anything but the obvious.