Norwegian skydiver nearly struck by meteorite

I did some quick googling and found this interesting research from Oberlin, with a history of meteorite injuries and deaths:<p><pre><code> 1420 BC Israel - Fatal meteorite impact. 588 AD China - 10 deaths; siege towers destroyed. 1321-68 China - People &amp; animals killed; homes ruined. 1369 Ho-t&#x27;ao China - Soldier injured; fire. 02&#x2F;03&#x2F;1490 Shansi, China - 10,000 deaths. 09&#x2F;14&#x2F;1511 Cremona, Italy - Monk, birds, &amp; sheep killed. 1633-64 Milono, Italy - Monk killed. 1639 China - Tens of deaths; 10 homes destroyed. 1647-54 Indian Ocean - 2 sailors killed aboard a ship. 07&#x2F;24&#x2F;1790 France - Farmer killed; home destroyed; cattle killed. 01&#x2F;16&#x2F;1825 Oriang, India - Man killed; woman injured. 02&#x2F;27&#x2F;1827 Mhow, India - Man injured. 12&#x2F;11&#x2F;1836 Macao, Brazil - Oxen killed; homes damaged. 07&#x2F;14&#x2F;1847 Braunau, Bohemia - Home struck by 371 lb meteorite. 01&#x2F;23&#x2F;1870 Nedagolla, India - Man stunned by meteorite. 06&#x2F;30&#x2F;1874 Ming Tung li, China - Cottage crushed, child killed. 01&#x2F;14&#x2F;1879 Newtown, Indiana, USA - Man killed in bed. 01&#x2F;31&#x2F;1879 Dun-Lepoelier, France - Farmer killed by meteorite. 11&#x2F;19&#x2F;1881 Grossliebenthal, Russia - Man injured. 03&#x2F;11&#x2F;1897 West Virginia, USA - Walls pierced, horse killed, man injured. 09&#x2F;05&#x2F;1907 Weng-li, China - Whole family crushed to death. 06&#x2F;30&#x2F;1908 Tunguska, Siberia - Fire, 2 people killed. (referenced throughout paper) 04&#x2F;28&#x2F;1927 Aba, Japan - Girl injured by meteorite. 12&#x2F;08&#x2F;1929 Zvezvan, Yugoslavia - Meteorite hit bridal party, 1 killed. 05&#x2F;16&#x2F;1946 Santa Ana, Mexico - Houses destroyed, 28 injured. 11&#x2F;30&#x2F;1946 Colford, UK - Telephones knocked out, boy injured. 11&#x2F;28&#x2F;1954 Sylacauga, Alabama, USA - 4 kg meteorite struck home, lady injured. 08&#x2F;14&#x2F;1992 Mbole, Uganda - 48 stones fell, roofs damaged, boy injured. </code></pre> <a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/bsimonso/group9.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oberlin.edu&#x2F;faculty&#x2F;bsimonso&#x2F;group9.htm</a>

A related question: what&#x27;s the probability of an aircraft being struck by a meteor. Seems this question was asked in the wake of the Air France flight 447 disappearance (since resolved as pitot tube freezing combined with pilot error and control feedback failures of the Airbus design).<p>But still, the odds of a strike on _an_ aircraft over the next 20 years are about 4%:<p><a href="http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2009/06/how-much-of-a-threat-are-meteors-to-aviation.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.revolutionanalytics.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;06&#x2F;how-much-of-a-th...</a><p><i>at any given time, airliners cover 2 billionths of the Earth&#x27;s surface. There are 125 meteors an hour, each with probability 2x10-9 of striking some airplane. In 20 years, that&#x27;s about 22 million independent possible impact events. The chance that every one of those meteors misses every airplane is: ppois(0,2e-9</i>22e6)*<p>(Using R).<p>So the odds of an asteroid flying past a skydiver aren&#x27;t as infinitesimal as one might otherwise think.<p>It also makes one wonder at the possibility of space-junk collisions being the cause of past aviation accidents. There&#x27;s little enough evidence this would leave, particularly for a flight which disappeared entirely without a trace, or whose wreckage was only found much later.

You can skip to the photo collage to get a better look at it.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=jfEdEIwhj6s#t=153" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=jfE...</a>

I&#x27;m... skeptical. If you look at the frames of the meteorite falling, it looks like each frame has the fragment at about 3 feet from its last position. If that&#x27;s a 60fps camera (I think it is?), that&#x27;s 180 f&#x2F;s speed or 122mph. That seems really slow for a rock flying into the atmosphere from space, and far slower than a rock would have to be going for it to &quot;cut him in half.&quot;<p>My guess: a rock that fell off the undercarriage panel of an airliner, and was carried by strong winds. Or a particularly slow meteorite.

This site has more information. It&#x27;s in Norwegian, but there are some charts and graphics which give an idea how they&#x27;ve been trying to locate the rock by analyzing the video and checking wind speed records.<p><a href="http://norskmeteornettverk.no/wordpress/?p=1329" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;norskmeteornettverk.no&#x2F;wordpress&#x2F;?p=1329</a><p>They estimate the speed of the falling rock at 280km&#x2F;h (vertical) and the speed of the guy in the wingsuit at 148km&#x2F;h (at 37 degr). It seems like they&#x27;re still uncertain about the exact speed, though. The wind speed was about 5m&#x2F;s.<p>One document in the video suggests the altitude that the rock passed him was 1200m... so the rock would have hit the ground 15 seconds later at 280km&#x2F;h<p>The research website mentioned in the article is linked on that page, but it isn&#x27;t up yet.

Shouldn&#x27;t we be expecting a rock that has just been heated to plasma stage by atmospheric friction only seconds earlier to be glowing, steaming or leaving little molten fragments of itself behind?<p>Update: maybe not. The last stage of flight is &quot;dark and cold&quot; according to this: <a href="http://www.meteorite-recon.com/en/Meteorite_fusion_crust_1.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.meteorite-recon.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;Meteorite_fusion_crust_1.h...</a>

They keep talking about how lucky he is it missed him, but I almost think the opposite is true: He&#x27;d have to have been staggeringly <i>un</i>lucky to have been hit by it.

Is it me or does it look like the &quot;meteorite&quot; is moving quite slow. Shouldn&#x27;t it be moving so fast that you&#x27;d need a high speed camera to see it in that detail?<p>Also...his parachute is always above him, maybe it fell out of that.

Seems strange that the other diver is following the same path as the meteorite and passes by just a few seconds later. Could he have dropped it and it accelerated to a speed faster than he was travelling?

JFYI To be hit by a meteorite you would either need to be close to the Earth&#x27;s surface or for somebody strong to throw it. Technically it is not a meteorite until it impacts with the Earth&#x27;s surface, therefore this object may actually be a meteoroid.

I don&#x27;t know why everyone is assuming it was so close. It looked further away from the dude to me... i&#x27;d guess ~100 feet or more.<p>In any case, given camera optics, you can only solve for size or distance given the other.

I wonder if it&#x27;s possible to use computer vision techniques on the video footage to calculate the position and altitude of the skydiver at the time, and then also estimate the trajectory of the rock?

Go to 2:12 if you want to skip the fluff.

It&#x27;s extremely hard to discern but it looks like there was possibly another smaller piece that goes flying by just before the camera stabilizes and the main meteor comes into view.

He almost got taken out by 1&#x2F;100bn odds.

Could it be Blue Ice[0] or a similar leakage from an airplane flying above the skydivers?<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ice_(precipitation)" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Blue_ice_(precipitation)</a>

Could it have fallen from some other plane, they weren&#x27;t aware of, that was above their altitude or do the principles of terminal velocity and gravity not support that hypothesis?

Isn&#x27;t it more likely that the rock fell out of their plane?

April Fool?