Not buying it

[unixronin]

This story is all over the ‘net today.  It claims a 14-year-old German kid was hit in the hand by a “pea-sized” meteorite, later found to be strongly magnetic (ergo, nickel-iron), claimed to be going 30,000mph, and that it bounced off his hand and hit the road, where it left a crater a foot across.  Kid claims the impact knocked him flying.

I don’t buy it.  I’m willing to believe that that’s what the kid THINKS happened.  But that’s not what happened.  Because the kid still has his hand.

And I’m sorry, but if a pea-size chunk of nickel-iron going 8.3 MILES A SECOND hits a 14-year-old kid in the hand, and the kid’s father is NOT named Kal-El, that meteorite is not going to “bounce off” his hand.  It’s going to turn his hand into pink mist and then continue on its way as though he wasn’t even there.

You want to tell me the kid was standing near where it hit, and a piece of flying ejecta hit his hand and the blast knocked him on his ass?  Sure, I’ll buy that.  I’d even buy that it missed him by millimeters and the plasma trail burned his hand as it went by, then the impast blast knocked him on his ass.  But an 8.3-miles-per-second meteorite hit him and knocked him flying, and left only a little tiny three-inch scar on his hand?

Bullshit.

But the story sounds sooooooo much more dramatic that way....

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s still an amazing story.  But it didn’t need any embellishment, and whoever just wrote down the kid’s version as is, without question, with all its logical inconsistencies intact, displays a severe lack of critical-thinking skills.

Update:  This MSNBC article is much less breathless and credulous, and is actually asking the right questions.

Comments

[ithildae]

The kid may not realize that he was not actually hit by the object. He knows that something hit him, and he went flying.

When we were studying momentum in physics, we calculated an inelastic collision of a car and a bug. How fast would the bug need to be moving to bring the car to a stop? It gives you some perspective on what would really happen. At 14, the kid probably just doesn't know. At least some news stories asked the right questions.