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When meteorites aren’t
By Marco Langbroek
About A/CC's mention last Friday of an "apparently uncorroborated report" of an English teenager being hit by a small meteorite in August 2002, it is apparent from the BBC photo, and even more apparent from a more detailed Ananova photo, that this was not a meteorite. I am 100% certain this is a piece of iron smelting slag, which can be found all over the countryside. It is the refuse of former iron smelting activities, some even dating back to medieval times.
Apart from the object's visual appearance, a number of items in the BBC story do not ring true. First was that it "looked rusty." A fresh meteorite would not be rusty. Second, that it was "quite hot." Meteorites, and certainly such small ones, are not hot when they reach Earth's surface. And third, if this was, as reported, a direct hit, a true meteorite would have broken foot bones. It would be similar to stopping a bullet with your foot.
Note also that there was no media follow-up
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reporting authentication, and no classification has been published in the Meteoritical Bulletin.
I personally investigated some similar stories where the fallen object certainly was not a meteorite. There are several possibilities as to how a terrestrial rock can apparently fall from the sky:
- Some birds carry, and drop, stones and other objects.
- Naughty little urchins throwing stones.
- Naughty little urchins with catapults.
- Stones dropping from the undercarriage of airplanes.
This last can do damage. In a case I investigated some years ago, a little girl received a glancing blow from a piece of runway asphalt. Although it just grazed her forehead, she needed stitches. One more inch and it could have been fatal.
Marco Langbroek is a professional archaeologist and an amateur meteor astronomer active with the Dutch Meteor Society. He is published on topics as diverse as Neanderthals and comet dust trails. See A/CC news last Thursday and the news Index for more of his writing.
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