“I heard a loud ‘boom’ coming from the roof next to us. In the second that followed, I felt a shock on the ribs. I thought it was an animal, a bat! An Alsatian woman was hit by a meteorite in early July in Schirmeck, in the Bruche valley (Bas-Rhin), reveals The Latest News from Alsace. The victim only presents as sequelae a bruise.
While this resident of Bas-Rhin is drinking coffee with a friend on the terrace, she is struck in the ribs by a mysterious pebble. “We thought it was a piece of cement, the kind you apply to the ridge tiles. But it didn’t have the color,” she explains daily.
The resident of Schirmeck collects the stone to show it to a roofer. The latter confirms to him that it is not cement, but that it looks like a meteorite. A few days later, the stone and its pieces are shown to geologist Thierry Rebmann.
Asked by the daily, the scientist confirms the nature of the stone. “You can clearly see that there has been a merger. We are in the presence of something ferrosilicate which could be part of the 6% of recorded falls of this type of meteorite, ”he specifies.
Being hit by a meteorite is a very rare occurrence, he says. “Perhaps on the order of a 1 in 100 million chance?” he wonders. All the pieces recovered have a total mass of 105 grams. “This meteorite is not rare in itself, it is not composed of rare metals like nickel, but what is rare is that the meteorite fell on it. A thorough analysis at the Institute of Earth Physics could reveal where this meteorite came from.
