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

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I didn't think of any of this. I concluded "bullshit" on totally different grounds.

The kid was standing at ground zero of a pea-sized meteor impact that was traveling ten miles a second, leaves a substantial crater, has enough concussive force to knock this kid on his ass...

Imagine how much force was behind the crater ejecta. The shrapnel alone would've turned his body into Julienne fries, and the gaseous ejecta would've given him severe burns at that close range. No Julienne fries, no flash burns? Guess it wasn't a meteoric impact that left a crater and knocked the kid on his ass, then.