Meteorite hits woman in France while she was having coffee on terrace: report

 The rare incident happened on July 6. When the woman was seated on an outdoor terrace, suddenly a mysterious pebble struck her in the ribs.

“I heard a big ‘Poom’ coming from the roof next to us. In the second that followed, I felt a shock in the ribs. I thought it was an animal, a bat! We thought it was a piece of cement, the one we apply to the ridge tiles. But it didn’t have the colour,”‘ the woman told French newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace.

To find out, the woman got the rock checked by a local roofer who told her that it was not made from cement but it looked like a meteorite. 

She also showed the mysterious object to geologist Thierry Rebmann who confirmed its extra-terrestrial origins.

Rebmann said that a mixture of iron and silicon was inside the meteorite, which is not rare in itself. However, the phenomenon of people being struck by such objects is extremely rare.

“Finding a meteor is already uncommon, but to be in direct contact and have it fall on you, that is astronomically rare,” Rebmann stated. 

“It’s very rare, in our temperate environments to find them. They merge with other elements. On the other hand, in a desert environment, we can find them more easily,” Rebmann said.

According to NASA, meteorites are ‘space rocks’ that survive their journey through the Earth’s atmosphere and hit the ground. Almost 50 tonnes of meteoritic material is estimated to fall to Earth every day. 

Updated: 17 Jul 2023, 09:17 PM IST

 The rare incident happened on July 6. When the woman was seated on an outdoor terrace, suddenly a mysterious pebble struck her in the ribs.

“I heard a big ‘Poom’ coming from the roof next to us. In the second that followed, I felt a shock in the ribs. I thought it was an animal, a bat! We thought it was a piece of cement, the one we apply to the ridge tiles. But it didn’t have the colour,”‘ the woman told French newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace.

To find out, the woman got the rock checked by a local roofer who told her that it was not made from cement but it looked like a meteorite. 

She also showed the mysterious object to geologist Thierry Rebmann who confirmed its extra-terrestrial origins.

Rebmann said that a mixture of iron and silicon was inside the meteorite, which is not rare in itself. However, the phenomenon of people being struck by such objects is extremely rare.

“Finding a meteor is already uncommon, but to be in direct contact and have it fall on you, that is astronomically rare,” Rebmann stated. 

“It’s very rare, in our temperate environments to find them. They merge with other elements. On the other hand, in a desert environment, we can find them more easily,” Rebmann said.

According to NASA, meteorites are ‘space rocks’ that survive their journey through the Earth’s atmosphere and hit the ground. Almost 50 tonnes of meteoritic material is estimated to fall to Earth every day. 

Updated: 17 Jul 2023, 09:17 PM IST