A meteorite is a piece of rock from outer space that strikes the surface of the Earth, a meteoroid is a meteorite before it hits the surface of the Earth, and meteors, commonly known as shooting stars, are glowing fragments of rock matter from outside the Earth’s atmosphere that burn and glow upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Most meteorites burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere; about 3,000 tons of meteoroid dust falls to Earth each day, but at least 100 meteorites with a diameter of 1m or more hit the Earth every year.
The odds of actually being hit by a meteorite are infinitesimal: only four people in recent history have been struck by one (source), so imagine the surprise of two senior members of the Sussex County Cricket Club (UK) when they spotted a black, five-inch rock hurtling towards them during a cricket match. “We were sitting at the boundary edge when all of a sudden, out of a blue sky, we saw this small dark object hurtling towards us. It landed inside the boundary and split into two pieces,” one of them was quoted as saying by The Telegraph. “One piece bounced up and hit me in the chest and the other ended up against the boundary board,” he said. “If it had come from the other direction we might have suspected someone had thrown it, but we saw it come in straight over the ground from quite a way out – it was definitely a meteorite.”
The pair kept the extraterrestrial pieces of rock for posterity and said they would be happy for experts to examine them. Dr. Matthew Genge, a meteorite expert at Imperial College, London, said: “If this turns out to be a meteorite it’s very exciting and would be the first fall in the UK since 1992.” A few days later, however, Dave Harris of the British and Irish Meteroite Society revealed the rock did not appear to have fallen from space: “I’m afraid it’s nothing more than a piece of Portland cement with flecks of brick dust and flint in it. It is most probably something that fell off the undercarriage of a plane. It was not like a meteorite at all” (source).
While the Sussex meteorite wasn’t “cricket,” it seems that the six meteorites that have struck the house of a man in Bosnia in the last 3 years are the real McCoy, at least according to scientists at Belgrade University who have confirmed that the rocks are all meteorites. According to The Telegraph (again!), Radivoke Lajic, 50, said that having his house hit by rocks from space was the result of an extraterrestrial grudge: “I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don’t know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit six times has to be deliberate. I have no doubt I am being targeted by aliens. They are playing games with me. I don’t know why they are doing this.” Whatever the cause, it doesn’t seem cricket either, assuming the series of meteorite strikes is true. As Henning Haack, a lecturer at Copenhagen University’s Geological Museum, said last year regarding a faked meteorite impact crater in Latvia, “when it comes to alleged meteorite crashes, there always is a pretty large margin of error” (source).
“There are several reported instances of falling meteorites having killed both people and livestock, but a few of these appear more credible than others. The most infamous reported fatality from a meteorite impact is that of an Egyptian dog that was killed in 1911, although this report is highly disputed. This particular meteorite fall was identified in the 1980s as Martian in origin. However, there is substantial evidence that the meteorite known as Valera hit and killed a cow upon impact, nearly dividing the animal in two, and similar unsubstantiated reports of a horse being struck and killed by a stone of the New Concord fall also abound. Throughout history, many first and second-hand reports of meteorites falling on and killing both humans and other animals abound, but none have been well documented” (source).
